Rufaro stadium will be ready in April

HARARE City's acting town clerk Josephine Ncube yesterday said council was working on renovating Rufaro and they are expecting to start erecting bucket seats and introducing Wi-Fi at the stadium.

Speaking on the sidelines of a tour of Rufaro yesterday, where work is being carried out on the pitch which now has natural grass, Ncube said they are starting the process of renovating the stadium.

The stadium is expected to host Premiership matches when the league gets underway next month.

Yesterday, the acting town clerk and contractor - Highmel Investments - toured the facility, assuring the local football family that by the second week of April, the ground would be ready.

Although the kikuyu grass was only laid early this week, with repeated watering, it is expected to be ready for football matches next month.

"In terms of Wi-Fi we have an arrangement with a local provider and you will see that Wi-Fi will be available at Rufaro and also at Gwanzura this coming season. In terms of the bucket seats, they are already on our budget for council and we will start putting bucket seats this year and we are also going to put up an electronic scoreboard at Rufaro," said Ncube.

The Harare City boss said they are also looking at renovating Gwanzura.

The Highfield ground was last season condemned by the ZIFA Grounds Committee.

"The council has made a resolution to spruce up the stadium, so you will see us putting a new turf, repairing the changing rooms, toilets and other works that need to be done.

"So we are looking forward to a season where we will have a number of clubs using the stadium.

"Rufaro would be ready when the season starts and we are now working at Gwanzura, the work there should take us a much shorter time because with Rufaro we first had to remove the artificial turf, but for Gwanzura it's sprucing it up in terms of tiling, painting and replacing broken items in dressing rooms," she said.

The renovations at Rufaro have a budget of $80 000.

Ncube said the drainage system was also being attended to by engineers.