The Deputy Minister for Lands and Natural Resources and Member of Parliament for Bole-Bamboi, Alhaji Yusif Sulemana, has called for urgent intervention to prevent the country's sports facilities from falling into disrepair, warning that some stadiums are steadily deteriorating due to poor maintenance.

Contributing to debate in Parliament on the Public Accounts Committee's follow-up report on the Auditor-General's audits covering the regulation of small-scale mining, the sustainability of sports stadia and the administration of GETFund scholarships, Mr Sulemana expressed concern about the condition of facilities he had visited, including the Bortman Stadium.

“I was amazed to see grasses overgrown and the facility more or less going to waste,” he said. “If this was for an individual, if this was for a private organisation, would you leave it this way?”

He noted that substantial public resources had been invested in constructing sports infrastructure, funds which could otherwise have been used to build schools, hospitals and clinics.

“It is our own money. Yet we thought that sports are a very important thing to do. And so for us to invest this much money into this area and allow it to go rotten is something that I think we have to take a second look at,” he added.

The Deputy Minister urged managers of sports facilities to improve maintenance and proposed that the government either allocate more resources for their upkeep or adopt commercial models that would enable the facilities to generate revenue to support their operations.

“Most often when we talk about these things here, when we leave here, nothing happens,” he said. “I think that the time has come for us to speak the truth and tell those responsible to do what is needful.”