The whistle has still not blown for the construction of a new National Stadium.
Minister of Youth, Sports and Community Empowerment, Charles Griffith, says they are still waiting on the government of China to provide the funding.
Asked about the Waterford, St Michael facility during the continuation of the Estimates debate on Thursday, Griffith said: “We are at a stage where we are still having discussions with the government of China in relation to funding. We were told that because of COVID they had to change directions in terms of priority.
“Hence we were impacted in the sense of not being able to sign off on the final document to trigger the start of construction of a new facility. That, we believe, should be in place because it is impacting in a significant way our athletes who need to train and it is impacting sports tourism,” he added.
“So plans are in train to have the National Stadium reconstructed and have a new facility. It is just a situation where it is totally out of our hands now. We are still looking to push as much as possible to have that National Stadium reconstructed.”
Since 2015 it was announced that Government will be building a new state-of-the-art National Stadium at a price tag of $150 million. (MB)