Sport not directly affected by budget cuts -Dr. Anthony

—Resource Center to be completed this year; paving of Synthetic Track expected to start shortly

With the budget debates over in the National Assembly, the Ministry of Sport now has the green light to continue its capital spending on a number of facilities.

According to Minister of Sport, Dr. Frank Anthony, several projects such as the completion of the warm up pool and resource centre, the continuation of the athletic track, upgrading of other sports facilities and the purchasing of sport gear and gym equipment will commence with the finances allocated to his ministry.

Dr. Frank Anthony
Dr. Frank Anthony

“A number of projects will be completed this year,” said Dr. Anthony yesterday during an interview with Stabroek Sport.

“The Resource Centre in another couple of months will be up and running, with the completion of that and there will be several other programmes.

“We will also start the paving of the synthetic track, the paving is expected to start shortly as well as putting in the synthetic surface and by midyear we will start erecting the stands.”

He continued: “The warm up pool at Turkeyen they will be working on that and maybe next year that will be completed so there are a number of things that will be happening in sports.”

The minister mentioned that the ministry was not directly affected by the budget cuts and the parliamentary subcommittee will convene in the weeks ahead.

“We are not directly affected by the budget cuts. The opposition had proposed to cut $100M from the arts and sport fund but they did not cut it so now that budget debates are over, we will now be reconvening the parliamentary subcommittee, so within a few weeks we will continue the consideration of the bill that is before the committee.”

“I think a lot of the work more than less we are getting a consensus so I don’t envisage a very long time in the committee so we should be able to sort that out.”

When quizzed on the National Sports Policy, Dr. Anthony replied:

“That will be released shortly because we have updated it and it is at the printers so when that is finished we will unveil that to the stakeholders.”

He also declared that… “This year we have about $300M that we will be using to develop community facilities and later in the year we will be developing the Bartica Community Centre.”