Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go is on track to de­liv­er a re­fur­bished Hasely Craw­ford Sta­di­um on time and with­in bud­get, ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Sham­fa Cud­joe. Speak­ing fol­low­ing a tour of the fa­cil­i­ty with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, UDe­COTT chair­man Noel Gar­cia and oth­er of­fi­cials yes­ter­day, Cud­joe stat­ed that works were near­ing com­ple­tion.

“We are still card­ed for the June 30th com­ple­tion date, we want to do tri­als in Ju­ly and not on­ly for this fa­cil­i­ty but oth­er fa­cil­i­ties, we are all aim­ing for a com­ple­tion date of June 30th. So far, UDe­COTT has got­ten to about 80 per cent com­ple­tion. So far so good, we are still with­in the 80-mil­lion-dol­lar bud­get,” Cud­joe said dur­ing the tour of the fa­cil­i­ty.

Ex­ten­sive re­pair works on the sta­di­um, lo­cat­ed in Mu­cu­rapo, com­menced short­ly af­ter Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions in Feb­ru­ary 2023.

The scope of work in­cludes struc­tur­al, plumb­ing and elec­tri­cal re­pairs, all be­ing un­der­tak­en to en­sure the sta­di­um is ready for the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games in Au­gust.

De­spite not field­ing ques­tions from the me­dia fol­low­ing the tour, Cud­joe stat­ed that Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley was sat­is­fied with the progress made in restor­ing the sta­di­um to its glo­ry days.

“He wants to make sure that we em­ploy the right strate­gies so that we can de­liv­er on time, not on­ly for the games but to en­sure that af­ter the tri­als, if there are any changes to be made they are made, so I think he’s pleased by what he has seen to­day.”

Cud­joe al­so not­ed that works will en­tail fea­tures to man­age crowd con­trol, giv­en the sta­di­um’s mul­ti-pur­pose use.

“In any fa­cil­i­ty around the world, any sport­ing fa­cil­i­ty is used for sport and al­so cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ties, so the same that ap­plies be­fore would ap­ply now and we are de­liv­er­ing to en­sure safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty is en­sured for not on­ly ma­jor sport­ing events but al­so cul­tur­al events.”