Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

As a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ty, new­ly-in­stalled chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott) Jear­lean John is plan­ning to in­ves­ti­gate whether con­trac­tors are still li­able to re­pair in­fra­struc­tur­al de­fects in the con­struc­tion of the $1 bil­lion Bri­an Lara sta­di­um. Sources who spoke with the Guardian yes­ter­day re­vealed that parts of the sta­di­um, which had not been of­fi­cial­ly hand­ed over to the Gov­ern­ment as yet were falling apart. The me­dia tow­er was leak­ing bad­ly and some the seats in the pavil­ion were bro­ken.

An in­sid­er source who works at the site said wa­ter was gath­er­ing in the gym and the VIP lounge and the roof cov­er­ing the mul­ti-pur­pose build­ing was built so high that it could not pro­vide shel­ter for the 15,000 peo­ple who are ex­pect­ed to be ac­com­mo­dat­ed. "The seat in­fra­struc­ture was sup­posed to be im­port­ed, but they built it here and now it is falling apart...The grounds of the sta­di­um are in good con­di­tion but the ac­tu­al build­ing is get­ting di­lap­i­dat­ed," the source said. Res­i­dents of Tarou­ba, who live on the out­skirts of the sta­di­um, said it was frus­trat­ing to see the mas­sive cost over­runs at the fa­cil­i­ty, which is lo­cat­ed on 180 acres of land.

Gas­par­il­lo res­i­dent John Charles said: "It is time that the sta­di­um be put to use...It sup­posed to be open al­ready but if the place falling apart, the con­trac­tor has to be held li­able." The sta­di­um was de­signed by Hell­muth, Obal­at & Kass­abum, a US ar­chi­tec­tur­al firm. The com­plex was de­signed to in­clude an aquat­ic cen­tre, Olympic-size cy­cling velo­drome, in­door gym­na­si­um, school for train­ing of ath­letes, a large car park, new roads, the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um and a crick­et acad­e­my.

Yes­ter­day, on­ly a few se­cu­ri­ty guards hired by con­trac­tor Hafeez Kara­math and Com­pa­ny, as well as Ude­cott se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel, were seen milling about on the com­pound. Me­dia work­ers were not al­lowed on the premis­es but ev­i­dence of the stained, mossy roof could be spot­ted from the high­way. Last Thurs­day, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic, So­cial Re­struc­tur­ing and Gen­der Af­fairs Mary King said the fi­nal cost for the sta­di­um was put at more than $1 bil­lion, and due to er­rors on the struc­ture of the sta­di­um that need­ed to be fixed, the sta­di­um could not be hand­ed over to the Min­istry of Sport.

She in­di­cat­ed that the new Ude­cott board, head­ed by John, which was ap­proved by Cab­i­net last Thurs­day, would soon be ad­dress­ing fi­nal struc­tur­al re­pairs to the con­tro­ver­sial Tarou­ba sta­di­um as a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ty. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, John said she would be look­ing at the ex­ist­ing con­tracts to de­ter­mine whether con­trac­tors were still li­able for de­fects at the build­ing. "I ex­pect to start work to­day...The board was ap­point­ed on Fri­day and next Fri­day, we will at­tend a board meet­ing," she said.

"The is­sues at the sta­di­um will be the first thing on the agen­da," John said. "We are do­ing our in­ves­ti­ga­tions to de­ter­mine the scope of the re­me­di­al works. "There is a li­a­bil­i­ty pe­ri­od and most like­ly there will be pro­vi­sions for de­fects. I am hop­ing that we are still in the war­ran­ty pe­ri­od, but if that li­a­bil­i­ty pe­ri­od is over we will have to go out and ten­der." Asked whether the con­trac­tors will face any penal­ties for poor work, John said she would have to in­ves­ti­gate be­fore de­ter­min­ing whether the con­trac­tor could be held ac­count­able for de­fects. She said al­though she was chair­man of Ude­cott for eight months un­der the PNM, she did not have all the facts.

"When I go to work to­mor­row, I will sit down and deal with all the hard is­sues, which I am fa­mil­iar with, and we are go­ing to move swift­ly to take all the ac­tion that is re­quired to get the sta­di­um open," John said.

The sta­di­um was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed since 2007 to host match­es dur­ing the 2007 Crick­et World Cup. Sources said sev­er­al con­trac­tors who car­ried out work at the Tarou­ba Sta­di­um were still owed lu­cra­tive sums of mon­ey, in­clud­ing Hafeez Kara­math and Com­pa­ny.