Joshua Seemu­n­gal

More than $80 mil­lion spent, and close to sev­en years af­ter the of­fi­cial open­ing of the North East­ern Re­gion­al Mul­ti­pur­pose Sport Fa­cil­i­ty on Ojoe Road, San­gre Grande, in Au­gust 2016, many res­i­dents say the fa­cil­i­ty has been a waste of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey.

The Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed the area on Thurs­day and spoke with sev­er­al peo­ple from the com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing three peo­ple liv­ing op­po­site the fa­cil­i­ty.

The project’s ini­tial es­ti­mat­ed cost was $79.6 mil­lion, but there have al­so been fur­ther un­known costs linked to re­pair work still on­go­ing on the floor­ing of the fa­cil­i­ty’s in­door sur­face.

The sport­ing com­plex, which start­ed un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, con­sists of fa­cil­i­ties for bas­ket­ball, bad­minton, net­ball, vol­ley­ball, gym­nas­tics, ten­nis and foot­ball.

How­ev­er, res­i­dents said that the fa­cil­i­ty is not achiev­ing what it was de­signed to do–pro­vide a fa­cil­i­ty for the de­vel­op­ment of sports among the com­mu­ni­ty’s youth.

“That thing is like a white ele­phant. Waste of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey. Once they had a meet­ing there when the vil­lagers had a town hall meet­ing in­side. Plen­ty of mon­ey paid, and I don’t know what it is there for. I don’t see any young peo­ple in­side there. That is sup­posed to be for the young peo­ple or the com­mu­ni­ty.

“There are not enough op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple. There’s plen­ty of un­em­ploy­ment. Plen­ty. That’s why we have plen­ty of crime. But you know once one gov­ern­ment do some­thing, the next one does blank it. These politi­cians are so il­lit­er­ate,” 70-year-old Jus­tine said while walk­ing past the fa­cil­i­ty.

“It nev­er opened to have any­thing in­side of it. This fa­cil­i­ty has been here for about five or six years. It just stand­still there. Waste of time and mon­ey, and re­al mon­ey spend there,” Jafay­at, who lives op­po­site the fa­cil­i­ty, said.

“I’m not sure but the se­cu­ri­ty usu­al­ly on the com­pound, but we don’t see any ac­tiv­i­ty … It looks like it’s been a waste of mon­ey be­cause it’s not re­al­ly in use,” No­ra, who lives in an­oth­er house op­po­site, said.

At least ten oth­er res­i­dents the Sun­day Guardian spoke with al­so be­lieved the fa­cil­i­ty was a waste of mon­ey, say­ing they have seen lit­tle to no ac­tiv­i­ty tak­ing place in­side.

They said they had all heard that the in­door fa­cil­i­ty con­tains qual­i­ty in­fra­struc­ture, but they were yet to see it for them­selves or at­tend a sport­ing event there.

“It doesn’t make sense hav­ing a fa­cil­i­ty and it not in use. For in­stance, there’s a Moth­er’s Day con­cert com­ing up, and it’s in a fa­cil­i­ty on the oth­er side, they could have kept it here,” a res­i­dent named Do­ra said.

“They don’t keep noth­ing there. The oth­er day I see they keep a lit­tle foot­ball thing, but noth­ing reg­u­lar. It has nice courts in there wast­ing. There are plen­ty of delin­quent chil­dren around,” a man in his ear­ly 40s from the area said.

When the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed the fa­cil­i­ty on Thurs­day, the main gate was closed, and we were told that the fa­cil­i­ty is not yet open.

To the front left of the build­ing, the project’s sign with the name of the fa­cil­i­ty leaned up­on the ex­ter­nal struc­ture of the build­ing. The graph­ics and text of the sign were bleached by the sun.

The fa­cil­i­ty’s car park was emp­ty ex­cept for a se­cu­ri­ty guard’s ve­hi­cle.

It was not pos­si­ble to get a glimpse of the in­door in­fra­struc­ture, but there was a well-man­i­cured foot­ball/hock­ey field in the dis­tance.

The Sun­day Guardian was told that there was an event last week­end.

SPORTT CEO ex­press­es sym­pa­thy to the res­i­dents

The fa­cil­i­ty is man­aged by The Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (SPORTT).

Ex­press­ing sym­pa­thy for the con­cerns ex­pressed by San­gre Grande res­i­dents about the North East­ern Re­gion­al Mul­ti­pur­pose Sports Fa­cil­i­ty, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go Ja­son Williams said SPORTT has been left to do re­pair work that the orig­i­nal con­trac­tors ought to have done.

He con­firmed that re­pair work is still on­go­ing on the fa­cil­i­ty’s in­door sur­face, but is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by No­vem­ber.

“Years ago, the is­sue was with the floor­ing be­cause the floor­ing wasn’t lev­el, and it wasn’t fit for pur­pose be­cause it could cause in­juries to the ath­letes, and it was a risk that we’d be tak­ing. This is from the orig­i­nal work done, and with any orig­i­nal work, there’s a de­fect time to give the con­trac­tor time to see if they could re­pair the work. Now, un­for­tu­nate­ly, it wasn’t done dur­ing the time the con­trac­tor could have done it, so we would have had to make pro­vi­sions to do it.

“It wasn’t just a mat­ter of or­der­ing sports floor­ing and tak­ing out the old one and putting in the new one. It goes be­yond that be­cause some of the is­sues came with the sub­sur­face. Be­fore you put on the floor­ing, you have to make sure the sur­face is prop­er­ly well-pre­pared. Oth­er­wise, you will just be spin­ning top in mud. We’ve done all this work in con­sul­ta­tion with the na­tion­al bas­ket­ball fed­er­a­tion

to get the right type of floor­ing for mul­ti­pur­pose and things like that,” Williams told the Sun­day Guardian on Fri­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Williams, the elec­tri­cal re­pair work is com­plete, and the ex­ter­nal field is ready and avail­able for pub­lic use.

He said res­i­dents can con­tact SPORTT and make a book­ing to use the fa­cil­i­ty.

“I un­der­stand the angst of the res­i­dents. Of course, you are liv­ing in the area, and you see this build­ing up there, and they are not be­ing able to use it. We are try­ing to do a re­pair job of what should have been done prop­er­ly, to be­gin with.

“We were told the floor­ing was be­ing sent by the orig­i­nal con­trac­tor, and it was in a boat com­ing to the coun­try … and noth­ing came. We’ve al­ready or­dered the sports floor­ing. The con­trac­tors have been iden­ti­fied to do the work to in­stall the sports floor­ing and get the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion,” Williams said.

In pre­vi­ous in­ter­views with the press about the fa­cil­i­ty, Sports Com­pa­ny Chair­man Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho said re­pairs were nec­es­sary be­cause of, what he called, the poor qual­i­ty of floor­ing ini­tial­ly in­stalled by con­trac­tor, Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Group.

He said, in 2018, that there were oth­er de­fects not ad­dressed by the con­trac­tor.

About the con­tract

In March 2013, the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment signed a loan with Chi­na Ex­im­bank worth US$85 mil­lion for six na­tion­al sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties’ de­vel­op­ment projects. The loan had an in­ter­est rate of three per cent and a fi­nal ma­tu­ri­ty date of Ju­ly 21, 2028.

It cov­ered ap­prox­i­mate­ly 85 per cent of the Gov­ern­ment’s $630 mil­lion (TT) sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties project. The North East­ern Re­gion­al Mul­ti­pur­pose Sports Fa­cil­i­ty was one of the projects. The oth­er projects in­clud­ed the George Bovell Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre, the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Velo­drome, and the Na­tion­al Ten­nis Cen­tre, as well as the up­grad­ing and de­vel­op­ment of parks, spaces and grounds through­out the coun­try.

At the of­fi­cial open­ing of the Sports Fa­cil­i­ty at Ojoe Road in Au­gust 2016, for­mer To­co/San­gre Grande MP Glen­da Jen­nings-Smith said the fa­cil­i­ty will help youths achieve their dreams and will al­so pro­vide fur­ther em­ploy­ment.