SHAS­TRI BOODAN

GML Cor­re­spon­dent

The gov­ern­ment says Sport tourism re­mains a key fo­cus of its eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion plans, with re­newed at­ten­tion be­ing paid to Cou­va South’s his­toric sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

On a re­cent tour of Gilbert Park in Point Lisas and the Sevil­la Club at Brechin Cas­tle, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and Cou­va South MP Bar­ry Padarath joined Sports Min­is­ter Phillip Watts to as­sess the con­di­tion of two venues cen­tral to Cen­tral Trinidad’s sport­ing her­itage.

Padarath said both fa­cil­i­ties had seen sig­nif­i­cant de­cline over the past decade and con­firmed that re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion ef­forts are un­der­way.

“Those grounds have been left to lan­guish for the past 10 years,” he said. “There has been no in­vest­ment in terms of the main­te­nance or the up­keep of those grounds and it's now in ru­ins.”

He de­scribed Gilbert Park as “one of the most utilised crick­et­ing fa­cil­i­ties” in the re­gion and said the re­de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tive could bring eco­nom­ic re­turns by at­tract­ing both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al sports fans.

Padarath said ear­ly-stage plans in­clud­ing ar­chi­tec­tur­al de­signs and project scope, al­ready have been draft­ed and will be pre­sent­ed to Cab­i­net.

“It may not hap­pen in the first year, it may not hap­pen in the sec­ond year,” he ex­plained, “but it is some­thing that we are com­mit­ted to in terms of a phased ba­sis to get these fa­cil­i­ties up and run­ning. Some of them are in bet­ter con­di­tion than oth­ers.”

Padarath not­ed that pre­lim­i­nary work had be­gun dur­ing the tenure of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment be­tween 2010 and 2015.

He said the Sevil­la Club, in par­tic­u­lar, was well po­si­tioned for a pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship.

“There has been an ex­pres­sion of in­ter­est with re­spect to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a ho­tel in the con­stituen­cy of Cou­va South that would ser­vice the sport­ing in­dus­try,” he re­vealed

Ac­cord­ing to Padarath, such a de­vel­op­ment would sup­port the gov­ern­ment's broad­er strat­e­gy of po­si­tion­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go as a sport tourism des­ti­na­tion.

“Ex­cit­ing times are ahead,” Padarath said.

Watts added that gov­ern­ment al­so is ex­plor­ing the con­struc­tion of a five-star ho­tel to fur­ther boost the sec­tor in Cou­va South.