SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

The mil­lion-dol­lar com­mu­ni­ty swim­ming fa­cil­i­ties in San Fer­nan­do and Cou­va have re­mained closed to the pub­lic for years. And the clo­sure is be­ing blamed on a de­lay in fund­ing from the Min­istry of Fi­nance (MOF).

In the mean­while, $42,000 is be­ing spent month­ly on se­cu­ri­ty to pro­tect the in­op­er­a­tive San Fer­nan­do fa­cil­i­ty. Pre­vi­ous­ly, the sum of $58,000 was be­ing forked out for se­cu­ri­ty month­ly. That pool has been closed since 2018.

Res­i­dents of the com­mu­ni­ties have de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as a 'dis­grace' and 'na­tion­al scan­dal'.

The pool lo­cat­ed in the Co­coyea com­mu­ni­ty at St An­drew's Park West, San Fer­nan­do, was opened on Au­gust 18, 2007, by then San Fer­nan­do East MP and prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.

The oth­er pool is sit­u­at­ed at Rail­way Sta­tion Road, Lisa Gar­dens, Cou­va, ceased op­er­a­tions from April to Ju­ly 2018. It was re­opened in Au­gust for one month and then shut its doors in Sep­tem­ber 2018. The fa­cil­i­ty re­mained closed for all of 2019 for re­pairs. The pool had not been op­er­a­tional for 18 months.

Cou­va South MP Rudy In­dars­ingh said the clo­sure of the Cou­va pool in his con­stituen­cy was a “scan­dal of the high­est pro­por­tion”, since the last he heard the fa­cil­i­ty on­ly need­ed a $15,000 fence in­stalled and some main­te­nance work to be re­opened.

In­dars­ingh ques­tioned why should the con­struc­tion of a fence pre­vent peo­ple from hav­ing swim­ming class­es and young swim­mers from train­ing.

Both the South and Cen­tral fa­cil­i­ties are be­ing de­scribed as 'white ele­phants', and 'eye­sores' af­ter years of be­ing closed due to the MOF's fail­ure to re­lease funds for projects to un­der­take lin­ger­ing works.

Just last week, Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe an­nounced to the pub­lic that the four-decade-old Jean Pierre Com­plex will be de­mol­ished as it is not safe for pub­lic use. This will leave cit­i­zens with­out a venue for tour­na­ments in the area in in­ter­im. A new fa­cil­i­ty will be con­struct­ed, how­ev­er, she said, as the sta­di­um will be 'tricky' to re­fur­bish.

Cud­joe al­so con­firmed that the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um and oth­er lo­cal sport­ing are­nas are due for ren­o­va­tion.

A security officer on the compound of the Cocoyea Recreational Facility.

INNIS FRANCIS

A Ju­ly 2020 re­port of the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC) chaired by Bridgid An­nisette-George fo­cused on an ex­am­i­na­tion of the main­te­nance of com­mu­ni­ty pools by the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs (MSYA).

The re­port list­ed sev­en pools–Co­coyea, Cou­va, San­gre Grande, Diego Mar­tin, La Hor­quet­ta, Siparia, and Laven­tille.

Of the sev­en, Co­coyea, Cou­va, and Siparia were iden­ti­fied as non­func­tion­al with Co­coyea be­ing the most prob­lem­at­ic.

They list­ed sev­er­al trou­bling is­sues that have left some of these com­mu­ni­ty pools non­func­tion­al.

The 87-page re­port found the MSYA faced chal­lenges with sourc­ing ma­te­ri­als to un­der­take re­pairs and main­te­nance work on the pools; in­ef­fi­cient in­ter­net ser­vice which af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion and over­sight; an ab­sence of a ser­vice provider reg­is­tered by SporTT; MYSA's out­stand­ing ar­rears to state en­ti­ties; swim­ming pools bare­ly gen­er­at­ing rev­enue to as­sist in its op­er­a­tional cost; and the dif­fi­cul­ty to ac­cess chem­i­cals and sup­plies to main­tain the pools due to de­lays by the MOF to re­lease funds.

The re­port stat­ed that the com­mit­tee’s “biggest con­cern was the lack of fund­ing to as­sist in the eas­ing of these is­sues” and “in spite of the con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the MOF, fund­ing was still be­ing de­layed which in­ter­rupt­ed the use and main­te­nance of these fa­cil­i­ties”.

It was rec­om­mend­ed in the re­port that the MOF should 'pri­ori­tise' the re­lease of funds to the MSYA to meet its pay­ments to state en­ti­ties with es­tab­lished time­lines and “en­sure that ad­e­quate fund­ing is pro­vid­ed for the up­keep and main­te­nance of com­mu­ni­ty pools by MYSA to en­sure com­pli­ance with the com­pre­hen­sive main­te­nance plan”.

The plaque leaning against the wall indicates that the Cocoyea Recreational Facility was unveiled by former PNM leader Patrick Manning, who was also the MP for the area, on August 17, 2007.

INNIS FRANCIS

A dis­grace in Co­coyea

In the 48 months that the 25-me­tre-long, six-lane pool in Co­coyea has been un­der re­pairs, an el­der­ly fe­male who lives in the com­mu­ni­ty said it pained her heart to see what the pool had be­come.

“I was a reg­u­lar user of the pool. Look at the state of the pool…it’s col­lect­ing rain­wa­ter and moss. It’s a com­plete eye­sore and a shame. For months we have been hear­ing that the pool will be re­opened and it’s one de­lay af­ter the oth­er," she said, speak­ing be­hind her gate.

A male res­i­dent who lives with­in a stone's throw away from the pool de­scribed it as a white ele­phant. "It’s a dis­grace that tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey built that pool and cit­i­zens can­not en­joy it. This pool should have been opened a long time ago to get some of those at-risk chil­dren off the streets. It's one way of curb­ing crime. Sad­ly, these are the things that are lack­ing in our coun­try."

The re­port stat­ed that the Co­coyea pool was closed for ren­o­va­tions in “Sep­tem­ber 2018 and sub­se­quent­ly in Feb­ru­ary 2019 to Feb­ru­ary 2020 due to me­chan­i­cal, elec­tri­cal and plumb­ing is­sues”.

To get the pool op­er­a­tional two con­tracts were award­ed.

A $610,087.50 con­tract was award­ed to pro­vide me­chan­i­cal, elec­tri­cal, and plumb­ing in­stal­la­tion up­grades to the South-based pool.

The start date for this project was Sep­tem­ber 4, 2019.

The sec­ond con­tract priced at $630,672.75 was al­so giv­en for re­pairs and in­stal­la­tion of ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty light­ing on the com­pound which was sched­uled to com­mence on Ju­ly 8, 2019, and com­plet­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2020.

Con­trac­tor paid in full

Dur­ing a Feb­ru­ary 12, 2020 com­mit­tee hear­ing, MSYA dis­closed that be­fore they ex­e­cut­ed work on the South-based pool, the pump room flood­ed out which trig­gered an un­der­ground is­sue, caus­ing the pool pumps to sub­merge in ten feet of wa­ter.

This cre­at­ed some chal­lenges as the pumps had to be re­placed which was more ex­pen­sive than hav­ing them re­paired.

MSYA’s per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Fa­rook Ho­sein ex­plained that for the project to con­tin­ue and to stay with­in bud­get, the project co­or­di­na­tor pre­pared a pro­pos­al un­der FIDIC (Fed­er­a­tion In­ter­na­tionale des In­ge­nieurs Con­seil) con­struc­tion con­tract reg­u­la­tions to ac­quire new pumps, and "some of the elec­tri­cal works had to be sup­pressed" which had to be done in-house.

Al­though there was a slight vari­a­tion with the $610,087.50 project, the cost re­mained the same and the con­trac­tor had al­so been paid in full.

An­nisette-George ques­tioned when the in-house work was ex­pect­ed to start, to which MSYA Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion and Sports Of­fi­cer II, Ron­son Hack­shaw replied “We sub­mit­ted a note and we are wait­ing on bud­gets to help us with the re­lease of the funds to start that project.”

Hack­shaw said the elec­tri­cal work was very im­por­tant as it en­tailed “se­cu­ri­ty light­ing of the perime­ter of the fa­cil­i­ty and oth­er mi­nor elec­tri­cal works in terms of switch­es”.

He an­tic­i­pat­ed by March 2020 the pool would have been up and run­ning.

Two-and-a-half years lat­er, work is yet to be com­plet­ed.

$58,000 a month se­cu­ri­ty fee ini­tial­ly

Com­mit­tee mem­ber Wade Mark ques­tioned what was the cost to safe­guard Co­coyea’s pool. Mem­bers were told a se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny had a month-to-month arrange­ment with SporTT to pro­vide such ser­vices at $58,000 per month.

The firm hired had on­ly worked a year.

In 2012, the re­port stat­ed that SporTT as­sumed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for se­cu­ri­ty, jan­i­to­r­i­al, and land­scap­ing ser­vices at com­mu­ni­ty pools.

This was changed in 2019 when Cab­i­net de­cid­ed for MTS to pro­vide these ser­vices in Feb­ru­ary of 2020.

Mark al­so pulled up SporTT for not hav­ing a reg­is­ter of ser­vice providers and en­quired from Ho­sein how the com­pa­ny went about its pro­cure­ment process.

“Is the Sports Com­pa­ny do­ing their own thing and you are just hear­ing by the way­side what they are do­ing?”

Ho­sein in­formed Mark that the month-to-month arrange­ment pre­dat­ed the Sports Com­pa­ny’s time and they were in the process of ap­proach­ing the Cab­i­net for a new arrange­ment with re­spect to MTS.

Earn­ing lit­tle or no rev­enue

It was al­so dis­cov­ered that the pools are high­ly sub­sidised and raised min­i­mal rev­enue to cov­er their op­er­a­tional costs.

The hourly rate for one lane of a swim­ming pool was priced at $40 while a school of 25 stu­dents was charged $100 per term.

It al­so showed that five pools–Cou­va, Diego Mar­tin, La Hor­quet­ta, San­gre Grande, and Siparia gen­er­at­ed over $668,000 in rev­enue be­tween 2015 and 2019 while Co­coyea earned noth­ing.

The an­nu­al main­te­nance cost of one pool is $631,000, while the to­tal year­ly main­te­nance cost for the sev­en pools was $4.4 mil­lion

The re­port al­so showed that the num­ber of peo­ple us­ing these pools dropped from 54,000 in 2017 to 38,000 in 2019.

Cou­va and Co­coyea col­lec­tive­ly at­tract­ed 13,000 users.

Couva Community Swimming Pool facility.

RISHI RAGOONATH

15,000 fence de­lays re­open­ing of Cou­va pool

The com­mit­tee al­so found out about the hor­rors at Cou­va and the rea­son why a $15,000 fence was de­lay­ing the pool from re­open­ing.

In ex­plain­ing what led to the de­lay, mem­bers heard that a BRC fence near the bleach­ers had some rust­ed met­al points pro­trud­ing and need­ed to be re­placed since it posed a dan­ger to users.

The MSYA ap­plied for a vire­ment (trans­fer of funds from one fi­nan­cial ac­count to an­oth­er) of $15,000 and sub­se­quent­ly re­quest­ed a re­lease. They were li­ais­ing with the MOF’s bud­getary di­vi­sion which as­sured them “by the end of the week”.

An­nisette-George ques­tioned whether $15,000 was keep­ing the pool from be­ing re­opened.

“All I am ask­ing is...in fis­cal 2019 you were able to spend al­most a mil­lion dol­lars to do ma­jor works be­cause the pool was done. So, what are you telling the com­mit­tee, you could not find $15,000 for your pool to be up hav­ing done the ma­jor work. So, it means we have de­nied for $15,000 an­oth­er 10,000 per­sons?” An­nisette-George said.

The pool had not been op­er­a­tional for 18 months. It shut down op­er­a­tions from April to Ju­ly 2018.

It re­opened in Au­gust and then closed in Sep­tem­ber 2018 and re­mained closed in 2019 for re­pairs up to this day.

Ow­ing state en­ti­ties

The re­port al­so re­vealed that the MSYA had owed T&TEC $90,233.17 for Co­coyea, Cou­va, Diego Mar­tin, La Hor­quet­ta Siparia, and San­gre Grande pools. This was for three months in 2019. Co­coyea owed the largest sum of $26,997.95.

These six pools were al­so in ar­rears of $9,453.01 to WASA for vary­ing months in 2019, with Co­coyea alone ow­ing $5,096

The re­port stat­ed that the MSYA had re­quest­ed the sum of $500,000 each for T&TEC and TSTT from the Fi­nance Min­istry. A re­quest of $189,000 was al­so put for­ward for WASA.

Of the $1,189,000 re­quest­ed, the MSYA re­ceived a mere $200,000 leav­ing a bal­ance of $989,000.

The re­port stat­ed up to March 11, 2020, no fur­ther funds had been re­leased.

Box

Man­ning: Co­coyea pool to be opened soon

San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning said on Wednes­day "we have been work­ing close­ly with the Min­istry of Sport and the pool should be re­opened soon".

Man­ning fur­ther ex­plained the pool was "closed for al­most two years dur­ing COVID as was every oth­er com­mu­ni­ty pool in the coun­try”.

He re­vealed that in­ter­views have been con­duct­ed for a new man­ag­er of the fa­cil­i­ty and oth­er main­te­nance re­quire­ments are be­ing ful­filled.

Cud­joe: Phase two to be­gin this week

On Tues­day, sev­er­al ques­tions were What­sApped to the Min­is­ter of Sport re­gard­ing the Co­coyea fa­cil­i­ty.

“Phase one of Co­coyea is sched­uled to be com­plet­ed to­day,” Cud­joe replied in a What­sApp mes­sage on Fri­day.

“And Phase al­so be­gins this month and should be com­plet­ed by next month. Works are cur­rent­ly be­ing done at that pool and oth­er pools,” she as­sured.

Her as­sur­ance came on the heels of the 2020 re­port on the main­te­nance of com­mu­ni­ty pools which raised con­cerns re­gard­ing the clo­sure of some pools.

She said Co­coyea was closed as a re­sult of cor­rod­ed val­ues that spring leaks, caus­ing mul­ti­ple fail­ures.

The min­is­ter said al­though the leaks were re­paired, they cre­at­ed ad­di­tion­al is­sues in the sys­tem, and as such me­chan­i­cal, elec­tri­cal and plumb­ing works were deemed manda­to­ry.

She said the pool was of­fi­cial­ly closed on Jan­u­ary 12, 2019, for as­sess­ment and re­fur­bish­ment un­der the MSYA.

As for what caused the de­lay in the pool be­ing op­er­a­tional, Cud­joe said "The ac­qui­si­tion of the as-built draw­ings to best as­cer­tain the plumb­ing and elec­tri­cal is­sues cou­pled with in-house as­sess­ment were crit­i­cal in en­sur­ing the project's suc­cess and sub­se­quent com­ple­tion."

The cost of the pump was $58,000 while the in­stal­la­tion fee was $2,500.

Asked if the min­istry had re­ceived fund­ing from the Fi­nance Min­istry for the project and if the out­stand­ing ar­rears to WASA and T&TEC for the fa­cil­i­ty had been set­tled, Cud­joe stat­ed "re­search on­go­ing".

She said the min­istry no longer pays the month­ly $58,000 se­cu­ri­ty fees.

"As of Oc­to­ber 1, 2020, se­cu­ri­ty firm Pro­TEC In­tel­li­gence Ser­vices Ltd was re­tained at a month­ly cost of $41,850," while there is no con­tract in place for land­scap­ing ser­vices. How­ev­er, jan­i­to­r­i­al ser­vices are in place to fa­cil­i­tate staff on site.

The pool, she said, was ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic at no cost.

"The Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to fa­cil­i­tat­ing the de­vel­op­ment of sport in Trinidad and To­ba­go through pro­grammes and fa­cil­i­ties at lit­tle or no cost to the gen­er­al pub­lic."

"While there are chal­lenges," she said, her min­istry "is clear on the im­por­tance of pro­vid­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for our cit­i­zen­ry to learn the vi­tal skills of swim­ming and wa­ter safe­ty through the pro­grammes of­fered at the com­mu­ni­ty swim­ming pools".