The cash-strapped Keith Mitchell government in Grenada is making moves to borrow another $10 million U.S from the state-controlled National Insurance Scheme (NIS) to facilitate its bid to hold matches in the 2007 Cricket World Cup.

Well-placed sources told GRENADA TODAY that the government is preparing a motion to take to Parliament to allow it to borrow the money from NIS to upgrade the facilities at the St. George’s General Hospital as part of an agreement reached with the organisers of the World Cup.

A source who spoke to this newspaper on condition that he was not named said that the money is needed to purchase a number of state-of-the-art equipment that is needed to treat the injuries of cricketers.

He stated that the government intends to use some of the money to do infrastructural work including the building of roads and bridges around the stadium that is being rebuilt with financial assistance from Mainland China.

Grenada’s poorly built stadium collapsed when Hurricane Ivan swept through the island in September 2004. Prior to this, the structure had begun to show massive signs of cracks on a number of the wall structure.

The developer of the stadium project, current Trinidad and Tobago Minister of Works, Colm Imbert had agreed to carry out a number of reconstruction work on the multi-million dollar facility.

According to the source, officials of the Mitchell government are holding “behind the scene” discussions with members of the Board of Directors of NIS to solicit their support for the motion that would have to meet with their approval before it goes to Parliament.

He said that the motion is expected to be strongly opposed by the Grenada Trades Union Council (GTUC) which is currently locked in a bitter dispute with the Mitchell government on the imposition of a 5% National Reconstruction Levy (NRL) or Income Tax in the wake of Hurricane Ivan.

He told this newspaper that early indications are that the trade union body is mot inclined to give support on the grounds that the Mitchell government cannot be trusted with the spending of public funds given its questionable financial track record over the past decade in office.

TUC officials have openly accused Mitchell’s New National Party (NNP) regime of squandering millions of dollars through the guaranteeing of loans to investors for a number of projects that failed to get off the ground.

It pointed to the Ritz Carlton hotel project in the south of the island, the Levera hotel and golf course in St. Patrick’s and the collapsed Call Centre Venture in Seamoon, St. Andrew’s, and the Japanese-funded fish project at Grand Mal, St. George’s.

The TUC has maintained that there is a “crisis of management” in the country’s finances by the current government.