Minister Lashley tours CARIFESTA XIII venues

Minister of Culture, Sports and Youth, Stephen Lashley, spent his Friday morning and afternoon touring the facilities that will be used as venues during the CARIFESTA XIII event.

During the first site visit at Queen’s Park yesterday morning, Lashley told the media that the tour’s main focus was on the buildings that were recently under renovation. He revealed that the project at Queen’s Park, the renovation of the Daphne Joseph Hackett Theatre, was a very important venue in their CARIFESTA plans as well as an important part of heritage preservation.

“I can say to you that we are expecting to have this project completed in time for CARIFESTA,” he said.

Lashley noted that even though the project had some delays on different occasions, in relation to the clearance of fittings and equipment which needed to be shipped to Barbados, he assured that it would be completed in time for CARIFESTA. He also noted that there was a slight increase of cost from the expected BDS$6.8 million to BDS$6.9 million due to “accelerated costs”.

“The main venues that would have received total refurbishment would have been Queen’s Park and the Gymnasium,” he said.

He revealed that the Garfield Sobers Gymnasium would have been refurbished to a tune of BDS$19 million, which would have been done as a gift from the Government of the People’s Republic of China.

He reported that this would have been the first major overhaul and refurbishment that the gymnasium would have undergone since being built. He mentioned that built into the agreement with the Chinese, was a one-year arrangement where the technical team from the Chinese construction company will be in Barbados to assist with the kind of transfer of technical knowledge that is required to maintain the renovated gym.

“You can see that we are quite ready, well in advance, for the hosting of the various events that we will be having here [Gymnasium],” he said.