Abdulraheem Aodu
13 November 2008
Kaduna — Despite the new deadline handed down to contractors handling construction works on facilities slated for the 16th National Sports Festival by the Kaduna State Go-vernment, the Ahmadu Bello Sta-dium mondo track expected to host athletics event will not meet the deadline according to the contractor supplying the track.
Following the postponement of the National Sports Festival by the National Council for Sports from November 15th 2008 to February 15th 2009, the state government and Local Organi-sing Committee (LOC) for the fes-tival reviewed the deadlines ear-lier given to the contractors for the completion of construction works given to them for the fes-tival, shifting the completion date from October ending to Novem-ber 30th.
However, two weeks ago, Go-vernor Mohammed Namadi Sam-bo gave stern warning to the con-tractors handling the facilities at the Murtala Mohammed Square particularly the one constructing the swimming and diving pools to finish the work and hand it over to the state government and LOC by November 30.
But Martin Osaile, the con-tractor handling the supply the synthetic mondo materials for relaying the track told Trust-sports yesterday at the Ahmadu Bello Stadium that the mondo track cannot meet the deadline as it cannot be completed before the first week of December.
He said the track has only been handed over to him two days ago after laying the asphalt sub base, adding that it takes 21 days for the asphalt to be degassed.
According to him, "The as-phalted track has just been han-ded over to me and it takes 20 days for the asphalt gas to evapo-rate while it takes another 21 days to lay the mondo track as you can see the technical officials co-ming to lay the track are not even here yet. They will be coming from Italy next week to commence work on the laying of the track.
"We are looking at a comp-letion date of first week of De-cember because they want to complete the work and return to Italy as soon as possible ahead of the Christmas."
He however answered in the negative when asked if the technical staff would come back after the Christmas to complete the work, saying there would be no need for their return as the work would definitely be comp-leted in December.
Though the contract for the laying of track was signed in July, the excavation of some in-ches of the sub base and subse-quent laying of asphalt to pro-vide for a good base for the track had delayed work till now.
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