Kaieteur Sport barred from Olympic-sized pool

Mar 04, 2011 Sports

– security cites new directive from MCYS

By Edison Jefford
Kaieteur Sport was yesterday barred from entering the site of the Olympic-sized Swimming Pool with persons who identified themselves as security personnel stating that the new order is that all journalists must now get a written permission to access the venue.
“Is so it going now, you cannot come in here; you have to get permission from the ministry to be able to come in here. Is not you alone coming, is other news (media) too but you can’t tek out the pool and so,” this newspaper was told when it visited the facility.
Kaieteur Sport was unaware that the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport (MCYS) had issued a new directive regarding entrance to the facility for the media. This newspaper had visited the site to get an update on the ongoing works at the Olympic-sized Pool.
Speaking at the Guyana Olympic Association Award Evening at the end of January this year, the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Dr. Frank Anthony had stated that “very shortly” they will be commissioning the pool that has been in construction for some time.
When this newspaper went to the venue yesterday, construction works were underway on a main western bleacher that has now replaced the initial grass mound. From the level of the works, it is clear that the facility have several weeks before full completion.
Initially, the pool was to have a warm-up pool and diving infrastructure, but those were dropped from the project. The mound was the latest feature of the facility to be scrapped. It was not lucid how much the facility is now estimated to cost with the bleacher.
In 2009, $40M of the then $316M overall estimated cost to build the facility, was spent on initial preparatory works, which included driving piles into the ground. Those works were scrapped as it was discovered that the pool does not require piles at its base.
Kares Engineering Inc. was the construction company then, and consultants for the project were E&A Consultants Inc. Anthony admitted at the Awards Evening in January that his ministry did not know that local companies had no expertise to erect the facility.
Because of that, the ministry was forced to enter into negotiations with Myrtha Pool where some time elapsed before the pre-fabricated pool arrived in Guyana for installation. Again the ministry discovered that no one in Guyana could have installed the pool.
Hence, German Sub-Contractor for Myrtha Pools, Norbert Schmidt, was brought in to supervise that feature of the facility with local contractors working on the VIP stand on the eastern side of the pool. From outside yesterday, the VIP stand seems completed.
As of November last year, the estimated cost to construct the facility had jumped from $316m to $455m with the last figure likely to increase because of the construction works on the bleacher at the western end that have replaced the initial grass mound idea.

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Kaieteur Sport barred from Olympic-sized pool

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