The long wait for the new $1.3 mil­lion turf for the Na­tion­al Hock­ey Cen­tre, Or­ange Grove Road, Tacarigua will go on for a while longer due to the prob­lems be­tween Poly­tan GmbH of­fi­cials in Chile and the sur­face man­u­fac­tur­ers in Ger­many.

This was stat­ed by T&T Hock­ey Board (TTHB) pres­i­dent, Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho when quizzed on the long de­lay in the ar­rival of the new as­tro­turf sur­face to re­place the ex­ist­ing one at Tacarigua which has been in use since 2007.

Poly­tan GmbH is a Burgheim, Ger­many-based man­u­fac­tur­er and in­staller of syn­thet­ic sport sur­faces, in­clud­ing run­ning tracks and syn­thet­ic turf. Poly­tan sports sur­faces have been in use for more than 37 years, with more than 25 mil­lion square me­ters of sports sur­face in­stalled across the world.

Orig­i­nal­ly in­tend­ed for de­liv­ery ahead of the March 25-April 2, 2017 FIH Men’s World League Tour­na­ment host­ed by the TTHB, the lo­cal hock­ey fra­ter­ni­ty has had a painstak­ing wait for the sur­face from Ger­many, which had been ru­moured to be on its way to T&T for al­most a few months now.

The turf, be­ing pro­vid­ed by Ger­man man­u­fac­tur­er Poly­tan was ex­pect­ed to be ac­com­pa­nied by the ap­pro­pri­ate clean­ing ma­chine for it.

How­ev­er, its first dealy back in 2017 was caused by the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T's (SPORTT) re-struc­tur­ing and the re­vi­sion of nu­mer­ous ser­vice lev­el agree­ments with all na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions falling un­der SPORTT’s re­mit.

Com­ment­ing on the is­sue ear­li­er this year, TTHB pres­i­dent Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho con­firmed that the As­tro­Turf which cost the T&T Gov­ern­ment close to $1,356,000 from Ger­man sup­pli­er Poly­tan, was soon to be en route to T&T with its ar­ri­val date ex­pect­ed to be at the end of April or with­in the first two weeks of May.

Dou­glas stat­ed: "We are now in the process of putting in a place a plan and time frame for the re­lay­ing of the turf when it ar­rives in the coun­try, and at the same time try­ing our best to have lit­tle dis­rup­tion to the se­nior na­tion­al men's hock­ey team prepa­ra­tions for the Pan Amer­i­can Games which comes off in Li­ma, Pe­ru from Ju­ly 29 to Au­gust 20.

In Pe­ru, the T&T men will come up against Cu­ba, Chile and Ar­gen­ti­na and Pool A while Mex­i­co, Cana­da, USA and host Pe­ru are in Pool B.

Ca­ma­cho, a for­mer Pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee, hope is that when the turf ar­rived in T&T, the Hock­ey Board would try its best to have every­thing in place so that it will spend lit­tle time be­tween the port and when it is in­stalled.

Ca­ma­cho said the Gov­ern­ment of T&T had done its part in pro­vid­ing the fund­ing to ac­quire the as­tro­turf two years ago and a let­ter of cred­it was done back in March for Poly­tan's bank Wells Far­go & Com­pa­ny based in Chile via First Cit­i­zens Bank.

How­ev­er, Wells Far­go & Com­pa­ny on be­half of Poly­tan then re­quest­ed that the doc­u­men­ta­tion from First Cit­i­zens re­sub­mit­ted and that was done.

Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stands that a new chal­lenge arose dur­ing the process and that cause a fur­ther de­lay.

Ca­ma­cho said, "So the main prob­lem was the hold up be­tween Poly­tan and their in­ter­nal re­la­tions with their agents in Chile and the man­u­fac­tur­ers in Ger­many."