It is not unexpected the statement made by officials of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 about the impressive stadium being rebuilt at the Queen's Park in St. George's by Mainland China.

The Chinese have demonstrated in these parts of the world in recent years what their construction workers are capable of doing in terms of buildings. The Chinese-built stadium in St. Lucia is proof of the ability of Mainland China to compete with builders in any part of the world in the area of construction.

GRENADA TODAY have never doubted the ability of Beijing to not only build a world class facility in the Spice Isle but to finish the project in time given the strict deadlines set by ICC officials for the World Cup.

However, it is quite amazing the amount of credit which Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell is now taking for the "foresight" of his government to dump the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROC) and re-establish diplomatic ties with the Mainland to get the stadium project going.

It is not our intention to get into a debate as to whether Taiwan or Mainland China would have built a better stadium for Grenada than what was done at Queen's Park by the folks from Trinidad and Tobago.

While the Prime Minister is gloating about the fine structure being put up at Queen's Park, this has not altered the fact that Grenada is still saddled with the repayment of millions of dollars from the old stadium debt.

What the government simply did was to use some of the one hundred million U.S dollars that it borrowed on the international market in order to pay-off the Trini promoters (Colm Imbert and Emile Elias) for the shabby work that was done on the old stadium.
Prior to the collapse of the facility, Imbert had given assurances that he would carry out some of the remedial work that was badly needed since the project was beginning to show signs of massive cracks on the wall structure.

The country has not heard one single word from government on whether Imbert was doing this free or how much additional funds the country had to pay him to do the remedial work.

In fact, if he was paid and did not do any work since Hurricane Ivan came and blew down the structure, then we need to know what has become of that money. And while the Prime Minister is running off at the mouth, the fact remains that his government did the country a grave injustice by not taking out the necessary insurance on the stadium at the time of Ivan.

So the country could not make any insurance claim to recover some of the millions that were badly spent in the first place on the Trini-built stadium. The same could not be said about the NNP Head Office building known as Mt. Helicon on Upper Lucas Street since it was insured and a claim was filed for losses with a local insurance company.

And while we are on the construction business, it is our intention to make a plea to government to do something about the Seamoon Cultural Center which also took a beating from Hurricane Ivan. The Culture Minister has stated that government is looking at the facility with a view to doing something much more elaborate than what was there before.

This is a very important venue that serves not only residents in St. Andrew North-east but neighbouring constituencies including those in St. Patrick's.

The Seamoon facility lends itself as an appropriate venue for staging national events and a training facility for our young people - an area that the NNP has been talking a lot about in recent years.

The unavailability of Seamoon was quite noticeable in this year's carnival. The venue can accommodate thousands of people both on the inside and outside and is not prone to flooding when it rains as the swamp lands of Victoria Park in Grenville and Tanteen in St. George's which were used to hold all the major carnival events.

Government needs to get the facility back in business as quickly as possible for the hosting of major events in order to provide an avenue for people in the other parishes to make a living. It is a common sight to see the number of vending booths manned by single women at major events held at Seamoon.

And the truth of the matter is that our women folks have now by and large become the head of households in Grenada as something has seemingly gone wrong with a lot of the men. These women anxiously look forward to carnival each year as a source of income-generating activity to assist with their back to school book-buying programme for their children.

The Parliamentary Representative for St. Andrew North-east, Roland Bhola should be making enough noise inside Cabinet and within the higher organs of the NNP in order to get the Seamoon Center back on stream.

This should not be left only to Mr. Bhola but also the other M.P's in St. Andrew's and St. Patrick's on both sides of the house given the importance of the facility to the people in that part of the island. The former representative, Oliver Archibald with all his short comings would have never kept his mouth shut and allow Seamoon to deteriorate right under his nose.

It appears that Bhola, along with Yolande Joseph-Horsford, Kenrick Fullerton, Alleyne Walker, Tillman Thomas and Anthony Boatswain and Senators Ingrid Rush and Emmalin Pierre have definitely fallen asleep on the job.

We are wondering if they are hearing the cries of the people in St. Andrew's and St. Patrick's and indeed the whole of Grenada as things get tougher and tougher in this country with each and every passing day.