Minister of Planning Mary King has described the incomplete Brian Lara Stadium at Tarouba as a "sad reflection on the management of money." King said that as both she and the Minister of Arts and Multiculturalism, Winston "Gypsy" Peters, toured the facility yesterday.
Speaking to reporters after a 30-minute tour, which has a seating capacity of 17,000 and was earmarked to be a cricket academy, hotel and training ground, King said its cost of TT$879 million, plus VAT, was a far cry from the initial assumed price of just over $200 million. She said: "The assumed price was based on nothing. Since then we have had cost overruns for various silly reasons, mostly bad management reasons. "It doesn't include what we understood was going to be involved in the complex which was that there was going to be an academy, a hotel and training grounds." She added: "From that point of view, if we want to complete it as a complex, which will include training, then a lot more money will have to be spent."
Noting that the stadium was a few months from completion, King said the issue of additional spending for the hotel and academy was one which the Government would have to decide upon for its budget. She said: "It's a stadium that apparently has been over-designed and therefore we could have had it done at a much lesser cost had we not had that over-design. "Second opinions on the design were not done and it has cost a few hundred million more than it should have."
Peters said Parliament was lied to about the cost of the entire project. He said: "What we have here now for the money that has been spent is nothing more than a stadium that is not finished. "Somebody lied to the Parliament as well because based on what they are telling us, it's not the same explanation we got in the Parliament as to why that much money has been spent."
