GOVERNMENT IS looking to raise substantial funding to complete the upgrade of the National Stadium.
Minister of Sport Stephen Lashley told the House of Assembly yesterday that even after Government had spent $3.5 million last year fixing the track, it found that a “significant allocation of resources” was still required to finish the transformation.
“We are committed . . . to developing a brand new ultra-modern stadium at the National Stadium at Waterford,” he said.
“We have started the work in terms of putting together a detailed proposal which I expect to take to the Cabinet so that that proposal can be made available to potential financiers and funding agencies so that we can have the kind of facility that ought to have been in place for the 14 long years of growth that the Barbados Labour Party always boasts of.”
According to Lashley, the former Barbados Labour Party (BLP) Government had contributed to the problems at the Stadium because it had “totally neglected” the facility.
“We have stands that have not been maintained,” he charged. “We have outfields that were left to rot and not cared for and, in fact, hardly any money of any major significance was put to the disposal of the National Sports Council in relation to upgrading and maintaining the National Stadium. We have now had to deal with that situation.”
He said the less the BLP spoke about the stadium and its problems, “the better”, adding: “Only last year we spent about $3.5 million in developing a brand new international track at the National Stadium after we found a track laid by the Barbados Labour Party where the angles were wrong . . .
?“So whether it was due to negligence, lack of foresight or what, we had a track where you could not record an internationally accepted time.”
According to Lashley, the substructure on which the track was placed “had to be totally dug up” and a new foundation put down.
Lashley made the comments when the House of Assembly debated two tourism-related bills.
One bill is to provide for the transfer of assets and liabilities of Government in relation to the Barbados Tourism Authority to a new company, the Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc.
The other bill provides for the promotion and facilitation of the efficient development of tourism in Barbados; the repeal of the Barbados Tourism Authority Act, and related matters.
Lashley, who is also Minister of Culture, told MPs that because of the “two bits of legislation” Government was “poised to not only transform how tourism planning is done in Barbados but we are poised to put in place the type of corporate structure that should have been in place for a long time to design and to help in the building of tourism product”.
He said: “You cannot have a product that visitors will want to embrace if you don’t have the kind of institutional mechanism and capacity to redesign, review and repackage that product. . . .” (TY)