Accra, April 16, GNA - Alhaji Mubarak Mohamed Muntaka, Minister of Youth and Sports on Thursday opened a three day seminar on National Talent Identification at the Ohene Djan Stadium, Accra. The seminar under the auspices of Ghana Olympic Committee (GOC) and the sector ministry is aimed at drawing a programme for identification and training of young talents in various sporting disciplines for rapid sports development in the country. It was also aimed at identifying young sportsmen and women to groom them to stardom by creating the needed platform and atmosphere and to offer unique opportunity for the introduction of the values of olympism in Ghana.

Alhaji Muntaka called on the participants to discuss issues bothering on funding for talent identification, develop requisite human resource capacity for the project and draw out modalities for identifying talents. He urged the participants to also explore ways of obtaining funds from the private sector to sustain sports development and promotion in the country since the government alone could not provide all the needed funding.

The Minister noted that since all activities leading to excellent performances in sports needs huge expenditure for infrastructure, training and participation with the government not able to continue to be sole sponsors, there was the need to seek other proactive ways of funding from other sources. Alhaji Muntaka also asked the participants to find effective ways of developing and training technical personnel to handle all sporting disciplines in the country. "This is because my short stay in office gives me the conviction that inadequate technical personnel has been a major draw back to the development of sports in the country. "This issue will therefore have to be examined closely together with other important issues in order to come out with appropriate recommendations for implementation".