The Public Relations Officer for the Youth Employment Agency (YEA), Emmanuel Afriyie has explained that the delay in payment of the relief funds to the sports athletes is as a result of the vigorous vetting process being done by the National Sports Authority (NSA).

The YEA signed a memorandum of understanding with the Sports Ministry to give some relief funds to athletes for the next six months.

The NSA has confirmed receiving all the list submitted by the various sporting disciplines but is yet to submit the list to the YEA for payment to commence.

The payment was scheduled to start in July but information gathered by Happy Sports indicates that the YEA is yet to pay the Ghc 500 to the athletes.

Emmanuel Afriyie explained that the YEA is ready to pay the money but is still waiting to receive the vetted list from the National Sports Authority on athletes who deserve to benefit from the relief fund.

“It is true that we haven’t been able to pay for the month of July. We were supposed to start paying in July but the problem now is that the Associations are still vetting the list of athletes to benefit from the fund”, he told Odiasempa Kwame Oware on Wamputu Sports on Happy 98.9FM.

“This process is very rigorous to ensure that only the deserving athletes benefit from this because it’s the taxpayers’ money”.

He indicated that the YEA is ever ready to begin payment if the approved list is submitted to the agency.