Fant-Sierra Leone non-profit football organization has 26th February 2022 launched and turned the Sod their second artificial turf installation at the Murray Town Municipal School Compound on the West end of Freetown.
According to Mamadou A Bah the Project Coordinator at Fant-Sierra Leone the artificial turf is one of the important projects in the community, because over the years they have been planning to get artificial to all communities where they operate, but the Murray Town community have been blessed to get such development.
Mamadou Bah furthered that they have to embark on many developmental projects in the School Compound such as building a Pavilion, Dressing rooms for both gender, toilets for both gender, a hall center for holding meetings, and Office space, floodlights, and a perimeters fence to protect the players and officials.
He confirmed that the project of installation is going to take three years and it is a 15 years contract with the School authorities and that they will be responsible for the maintenance of the entire facilities including getting security to man the properties in the venue.
The Minister of Sports Ibrahim Nylenkeh who is one of the keynote speakers said Fant-Sierra Leone has been one of the best Philanthropist Sporting organizations that have transformed sports in many ways.
According to the minister, one key one is the development of Football venues for Young athletes who have chosen Football as their career.
He thanked the Murray Town community for providing the enabling environment for Fant-Sierra Leone to do the artificial installation as it will bring more development in the entire community.
He affirmed that the history of the Artificial turf project was not meant for Murray Town, but Aberdeen Community but Fant- Sierra Leone fallout with the community based on the Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) in which he was a moral guarantor to that project, but he had to tell the organization to move it to Murray Town Community and called the community people to take ownership of the project and protect it for a long-lasting.
Ibrahim Nylenkeh said the MOU signed by the community people let them work with the terms and conditions in the MOU to avoid an embarrassment.
“Sierra Leone as a Country our players have been finding it difficult to excel in European Country in their footballing career simply because most they have used to playing on bad surfaces, but with such a development project, the nation will be proud of having Stars from the community”, the minister said.
Fant-Sierra Leone and the Murray Town School signed for a fifteen years lease before the field belong to the Schools; they have ten communities where they operate across the country.
Each of these communities has a structured football organizations and football is actively played in those communities as they benefit from their international partners in Denmark.
They also have over years give support to handball federation for their international in Conakry Guinea.