President of the Ghana Boxing Authority (GBA), Abraham Kotei Neequaye, says the country’s inability to get boxers to the 2024 Paris Olympics can be attributed to the lack of training facilities in the country.

Ghana failed to produce a single boxer at the games though the sport has given the country four of our five Olympic medals.

Boxing promoter, Michael Amoo Bediako, recently described as “criminal” Ghana’s inability to produce any boxer for the Olympics, demanding immediate changes to leadership to help address challenges confronting amateur boxing.

But Speaking to Luv Fm’s Delali Atiase in an interview, the GBA boss, Abraham Neequaye said Ghana’s only boxing emporium constructed to train and camp boxers has been taken over by the owners.

SSNIT built the emporium to help support the sport in the country, but the hostel to camp the boxers has been given out to nurses, while the equipment for training has been left in public hands due to SNNIT’s decision to halt their corporate social responsibility obligations.

According to Abraham Neequaye, it will be difficult to develop boxers if they don’t have the grounds to train, a situation he finds unacceptable.

“We have a boxing emporium which SSNIT constructed as a corporate social responsibility to support boxing. We were using it until they decided to take the place from us. This is the only emporium that we have, where we have all the boxing equipment, where we can camp the boxers but SSNIT has taken it over and is running it as a commercial business.

“We couldn’t camp our boxers because the hostel has been given to nurses and the nurses are sleeping in there. The gym that we should be training in has been hired for the public and macho men and women come and train there. You go there now and the equipment including the punching bags are all going to waste. So if you sack the people and they go home how then do you expect a performance,” he lamented.

With virtually no budget allocation for boxing from the Sports Ministry, Abraham Neequaye fears the worst for the sport.

“Now if boxers have to train there we have to pay and we don’t have money. If I want to organize a boxing event at the arena, a promoter has to pay Ghc22,000 for a night. If we don’t have that money, we can’t have competitions and there’s no budget allocation to the Ghana Boxing Authority. No money comes from the government to the Ghana Boxing Authority,” he emphasized.