Minister of Sport Dr Frank Anthony at his Main Street office on Thursday handed over cheques and brush cutters to Regional Executive Officers (REOs) of Regions One, Three, Seven, Eight, Nine and Ten to support the development and maintenance of their respective community grounds.
The ministry has a budget of $100M for development and maintenance works on grounds across the country, and earlier this year Dr Anthony called on communities to make their proposals. And once the request is viable between half of a million to one million dollars can be given to communities. Regions One, Three, Seven, Eight, Nine and Ten uplifted their brush cutters on Thursday as well. On June 4, Regions Four, Five and Six received theirs. Each brush cutter costs $425,000.
Region Four received two brush cutters while one was given to each of the other regions. It was explained that Region Four was given two because it has a large cluster of grounds. One of the brush cutters is kept in Georgetown while the other is moved around to other parts of the region. The sports ministry controls the one in Georgetown. Anthony stated that he had received a number of requests for the financial support and realized that maintenance of the community grounds was a worthy cause. Some of the requests were granted earlier while others were fulfilled recently. Anthony is calling on other interested communities to make their requests, adding that the sports ministry will not hesitate to consider them.
The minister added that the next round of processing of requests will be done in mid-September. Meanwhile, Region Five Regional Executive Officer (REO), Ashford Abedekar, stated that the brush cutter in Region Five is in full use in the preparation of school grounds for the new term, and it was utilized also on all the community grounds in the region as well.He stated that he was very pleased with the partnership with the Sport Ministry, the Ministry of Local Government and the Regional Democratic Councils. He noted that the local government ministry has expertise on the ground so they consult them when identifying the grounds that need upgrading, while the money is passed through the RDCs to ensure accountability.
