The Chief of Staff, Mr Julius Debrah, has vowed to champion an initiative to create awareness on the benefits of sports and regular exercise.
According to him, countries that have taken regular exercise serious to keep her citizens fit often have lower health bills.
“Countries like Malaysia and others have exercise rooms in some of their establishment that allow staff to work out before or after work. Such countries don’t spend that much on health.”
The Chief of Staff made the vow on Saturday when he led a group of friends and journalists in a community health walk to create awareness on the need to exercise regularly.
It drew hundreds of keep fit fanatics who covered a distance of 9km in less than two hours.
Speaking to the media after the walk, Mr Debrah stated that the idea followed the President’s discussion with him over the benefits of sports and physical exercise.
He indicated that under a Presidential Special Initiative for Sports and Constituency Sports Initiatives, awareness would be created to take physical exercise closer to the doorstep of every Ghanaian.
“This may not be new because we have a lot of Keep Fit Clubs who are making sure quite a number of people exercise regularly.
“However, what we seek to do is to get it to the various constituencies and communities.”
In this regard, he emphasised, anybody can just get up and rally people around to walk to exercise.
The initiative, according to Mr Debrah was more of a preventive measure to cut down on the health bill of the country.
“I hope that my involvement in this would inspire many more people to exercise daily to stay fit.”
He urged both private and government institutions to make sports and exercise part of their regimen to ensure their staff remain fit to increase productivity.
“The benefits are enormous so we have to work hard to ensure that today’s event is not a nine-day wonder,” he added.
BY ANDREW NORTEY