Repairs of sports pavilions still on the cards

Plans to repair a number of sports pavilions across the country have not been put on hold.

Minister of Youth, Sports and Community Empowerment, Dwight Sutherland, disclosed this recently during an interview with The Barbados Advocate. He said the pavilions currently earmarked for repairs are Boscobel, Passage Road, and Lammings.

“These are some that we will definitely be repairing this year. Some work has started already. We may be able to execute the repairs to Lammings before the end of the financial year, but for sure the Ivy where we are right now will be done in the financial year 2021-2022 as well as Briar Hall.”

He added, “We would love to do more, but based on where we are now with respect to our economy and what COVID-19 has brought us, we will do as much as we can based on the current economic climate. But I can assure you that the Ministry, we are working actively on seeing excellent repairs and I have committed to the Ivy, just as I have committed to Passage Road, just as I have committed to Boscobel, just as I have committed to Lammings. So those are the major ones that we would like to execute before the end of the financial year. I am not certain we will achieve 100 per cent of those, but certainly we will be pushing.”

Identifying some of the problem areas at the pavilions, he stated some have doors, flooring and windows that need replacing. Some also have damaged cupboards and leaking roofs.

Sutherland explained some of these issues came about as a result of the pavilions “being closed up, and we have to understand we have not had over the years the level of sporting programmes within communities that we ought to have been seeing. So our Government when we came to office, one of our mandates was to have community sports revived and in an effort to have community sports revived, we need good infrastructure.”