The Referees Association of Ghana (RAG) have suspended their services from all football activities in the country effective tomorrow, until all arrears owed them are paid.
In a letter signed by Deputy General Secretary of the Association, Kwao Sampson, the referees said they were compelled to take the decision because they are finding it difficult to travel to match venues due to the unpaid allowances.
Officiating fees have not been paid referees since the start of the Normalization Committee Special Competition in March. The referees are reportedly owed officiating fees in excess of Ghs 300,000.
Last week, the referees warned they would suspend their services if all arrears owed them were not settled by the end of April.
Each referee is entitled to 850 Ghana cedis per match and the NC Special Competition is 9 matches in.
The Women’s Special Competition ended 3 weeks ago but the women referees also remain unpaid.
SUSPENSION OF MATCH OFFICIATING BY REFEREES
We write to inform you that the Referees Association of Ghana after carefully deliberating on your failure to redeem your promise of paying all outstanding officiating fees owed our members before close of April 2019, we decided to call on all our members to suspend handling all football match officiating at all levels and at all league centers from tomorrow, 7th May 2019.
RAG is compelled to take this tough decision because several letters were written drawing your attention to the unpaid officiating allowances and other things which were consistently not attended to. All RAG members owed are finding it difficult to travel to match venues due to the unpaid allowances.
Apart from this, RAG National Executives also placed several calls to various Executive Members of the Normalization Committee without any favorable feedback.
As a result of the above, members of Referees Association of Ghana have the firm instruction to SUSPEND all activities relating to match officiating from tomorrow until all issues relating to outstanding unpaid officiating fees and other Referee challenges are immediately resolved.
By a copy of this notice, all Referees Association of Ghana, Regional Chairmen are to immediately notify all Referees within their Regions about this suspension immediately until otherwise advised by the RAG, National Secretariat.
Yours faithfully,
Kwao Sampson
Deputy General Secretary
