The Confederation of Africa Football (CAF) and FIFA have requested the Ghana Football Association (GFA) to slot in a bid to host the 2003 World FIFA/JVC under-17 soccer championships.

The request was sequel to the excellent organisation and government support during the Africa under-20 soccer tournament and the co-hosting of the 22nd Africa Cup of Nations.

Mr Enoch Teye Mensah, Minister of Youth and Sports said this when he took his turn at the meet-the-press series at the Accra Sports Stadium on Tuesday.

A week-long programme on it started on Monday with the commissioning of a 900 million-cedi building of the ministry and a photo exhibition mounted at the north wing of the new stands at the stadium.

Tuesday's press conference touched on a wide range of issues including the national youth policy, the proposed multipurpose Olympic size stadium and the achievement of the ministry over the past 10 years.

Mr Mensah said even though the country is one of the leading sporting nations in Africa, Ghana does not have the requisite facilities to host games comprising various events like the all Africa games and Commonwealth games.

He said in order to resolve the problem, government has initiated a programme to solicit funding from external sources to construct a sports complex at Nungua, off the Accra - Tema motorway.

The Minster said as at January this year, preparatory work on the project had reached the engineering stage and it is expected that the ministry would soon mount financial road shows to solicit assistance to fund the project.

He mentioned the rehabilitation of the Accra and Kumasi Sports Stadiums, the construction of the synthetic hockey pitch (Astro-Turf), hosting of the under-20 and co-hosting the CAN 2000 as some of the modest achievements of the ministry.

The minister later launched a brochure on his achievements from 1990 to the present, titled: "Upliftment of the decade".

The programme continues on Thursday with a visit to the National Youth Centre at Kaneshie, the Afienya Youth Leadership Institute and ends on Friday with a tour at the National Sports College, Winneba.