Panaji, June 27 (IANS): The NCP has demanded a probe into the quality of sports infrastructure constructed for the recently concluded Portuguese Commonwealth Games in Goa, including a brand new albeit leaking indoor stadium.
"The swimming pools, the synthetic track, indoor stadiums are malfunctioning and the infrastructure worth hundreds of crores, which was built for the Lusofonia Games, is now lying unused," Nationalist Congress Party state vice president Trajano D'Mello said.
The Lusofonia Games are the Portuguese equivalent of the British Commonwealth Games. The third edition of the Games was held in Goa in February this year for which infrastructure was constructed in a veritable race against time.
Some months after the Games, however, the NCP now claims that swimming pools, stadia and other facilities which were built for the mega event at the cost of over Rs. 200 crore were now in disrepair and unutilised.
"The swimming pool in Peddem Mapusa is malfunctioning. There are reports of children developing a rash after swimming in it because the filtration system is not working properly. There are leakages in many stadiums. In other places, parts of the roofing have been pulled off with the first rain," D'Mello said, demanding a probe into what he called was a Lusofonia Games infrastructure scam.
In fact, when Narendra Modi, during the course of his first official outing to a state since he became the prime minister, addressed a party workers' meeting at the newly constructed Shyama Prasada Mookerjee indoor stadium at the Goa University grounds, the roof was leaking in several places.
The stadium is less than six months old.
The 12-day Lusofonia Games featured countries like Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Goa (India), Macau (China), Mozambique, Portugal, Sao Tome and Principe and Sri Lanka, whose athletes competed in nine sporting disciplines – athletics, basketball, beach volleyball, football, judo, table tennis, taekwondo, volleyball and wushu.
The Lusofonia Games 2014 were the third edition of the Portuguese Commonwealth Games. The first two were held in Macau (China) in 2006 and in Lisbon in 2009.
