By Ameenu Shardow
Follow on Twitter @alooameenu
The Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) have dismissed media reports that they have made contributions to double the bonuses of the Black Stars for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations.
Reports are rife that the confirmed flat payment of $5000 to be made by the Sports Ministry to each Black Stars player for each game at the 2015 AFCON regardless of the result has been doubled with the contribution from GNPC.
This meant, each Black Stars player will now receive $10,000 instead of the $5000 agreed upon.
But Chief Executive Officer of GNPC – the headline sponsors of the Black Stars – Alex Mould has dismissed these claims, insisting no such arrangement has been made.
“The GNPC package is quite simple. We take care of the coach’s salaries and the friendly games they play,” he said.
“We do not take care of the bonuses of the Black Stars; that is the prerogative of government however, if GNPC is called to support the Black Stars in any way we will dig deep and go to our board and our board will most likely give approval for us to support them in any way.
“But our package with them remains the same, we have not had a conversation with the Ministry on this and as far as we know, that is being handled at the Ministry level.”
The bonus structure for the Black Stars have been revised following Ghana’s disappointing showing at the 2014 World Cup which has been widely attributed to agitations by players over delayed payment of appearance fees.
The team instead of being handed winning bonuses in excess of $10,000 per match will now receive a flat amount of $5000 for all the games they play at the 2015 AFCON regardless of the result.