Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Dr Frank Anthony is not about to rush to get the new $455m swimming pool in operation.
Rather, usage of the pool will not be set in motion until all the details are completed to the minutest detail.
According to the minister, the pool still has “a number of small defects,” and cannot be commissioned until the deficiencies have been rectified.
Dr. Anthony said that the consultants for the pool have identified defects on works being done by the local contractor at the pool.
The local contracting company in operation is said to be Kares Engineering Inc. and Dr Anthony said that since the construction works are still in the defects and liability period, the contractor was instructed to rectify the problems.
Asked whether the pool would be finished before the end of the year, Dr Anthony said that it is already operational but the completion of the auxiliary facilities was hampering the opening of the pool.
Dr Anthony, however, did not give a definitive completion date for the facility.
“The pool is, as I said before, it’s operational. The local contractor that has been working on the pool, our consultants who are there have identified a number of small defects and they are in the defects and liability period so we have asked them to correct it before they formally hand that over to us, and we are contemplating on doing some additional works around the pool,” Dr Anthony said
He also noted that the ministry will have to do other “additional works” at the pool. The additional works, Dr Anthony said, were not catered for in the contracts that have already been signed so they will have to be done separately.
He did not elaborate on what the additional works would involve, nor did he indicate what additional cost will be incurred in order to have that done.
But he said that once all the works were completed the pool will be commissioned and opened to the public.
“What we want to do, we want to do some additional works around the pool because that was not catered for in the contract. “So once we have completed those then we will open it to the public.”
The pool is a project of the Ministry of Culturealmost three years ago in January 2008.
The construction of the pool has since seen a huge cost increase, design modifications and persistent deadline failures.
