TRAINING PITCHES FOR KUMASI CAN 2008 VENUE BEHIND SCHEDULE

The Minister of Education, Science and Sports, Professor Dominic Fobih has expressed displeasure at the contractors handling the training pitches at the Kumasi venue of the 2008 African Cup of Nations. With just about four months to the start of the tournament construction works on the training pitches in Kumasi are yet to reach any appreciable level in readiness for the games. Not a single pitch out of the four is ready for the tournament. The school fields at Opoku Ware Secondary School (OWASS), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Prempeh College and Wesley College are being refurbished to be used as training pitches for the tournament. While three of them have seen some amount of works done on them, that of Prempeh College was lagging behind greatly. The contractors, CST Limited, are still leveling the ground and have not even started with the drainage works on the pitch at Prempeh not to mention the leveling and greening of the pitch. The other three have had their drainage systems completed with top soil filled on them awaiting black soil and greening. The shower rooms at all the four training pitches were also yet to reach any appreciable level. Prof Fobih, who was on an inspection tour of facilities for the tournament in the Kumasi venue on Tuesday, expressed equal displeasure at the consultants for the project, ABP Consult. He said the consultants should have been up and doing to put pressure on the contractor to deliver. “It does not have to take the Minister to come here to know that the project was delaying” “The rate at which you are working is not appreciable”, the Minister told Mr John Antwi, Quantity Surveyor for CST Limited. The Minister said he would come to Kumasi to inspect progress of work on the training pitches in two weeks time.
The contractor has up to November ending to hand over the training pitches. Prof Fobih said the contractor did not have to wait until November ending to complete the project and urged him to take a cue from the Chinese who constructed the Essipong Stadium, saying they were aware of the deadline, yet they managed to finish ahead of schedule. He expressed displeasure at the limited number of the workforce of the contractor and urged him to increase his work force so as to be able to complete the work on time. It was observed that the contractor had a skeleton workforce on site at the time of the Minister’s visit. While there was no worker on site at WESCO there were only seven workers on site at Paa Joe and eight at Opoku Ware. Prof Fobih visited the Baba Yara stadium which was about 90 percent complete and the City Hotel project. He said he was happy with the work at the stadium and described it as quality work. The contractors, Consar Limited were putting finishing touches to the Baba Yara Stadium project. They are currently working on the ceiling for the roof at the VIP stand, the tartan tracks, spectator seats, the scoreboard and furnishing of the VVIP.