By Neto Baptiste
Minister of Sports, Daryll Matthew, said he is pleased with the current pace of work being carried out at the YASCO Sports Complex, and that the country’s lone track & field facility will be completed in “relatively short order.”
Matthew made the revelation during an interview with OBSERVER media this week after having recently visited the facility located on the Old Parham Road, just opposite the Christ the King High School.
“We’re confident it is going to be done in relatively short order, I think we’re past the worst, certainly. Most of the work is done and it’s just for the finishing and I am happy with where we are and I invite you [public] to go up to YASCO and have a look and you could see for yourselves where things are,” he said.
According to Matthew, the contractors have been making steady progress given the conducive weather over the past weeks, adding that officials from international track building company, Mondo, are slated to visit the facility early next month to assess and hopefully approve the work done thus far.
“They’ve started the paving of the track itself and hopefully the officials from Mondo are being scheduled to come into Antigua over the next two weeks I believe, at which point, the final paving is expected to take place and the laying of the rubber commencing. We are pleased with the pace of the work, we understand what the drawbacks were and what the delays were and they were out of our control because primarily, it was weather, but thankfully, we’ve had some good weather over the last two weeks or so and the work continues at a pace,” the minister said. In a recent interview, President of the Antigua and Barbuda Athletics Association and a trained engineer, Everton Cornelius, predicted the facility would be ready between March and June next year. Mathew was however, not prepared to give a more specific timeline for the completion of the ongoing work.