News / National
Council abandons Barbourfields bucket seats
05 Nov 2021 at 02:41hrs | Views
THE Bulawayo City Council has given up on plans to erect bucket seats at the City's ceremonial home of football, Barbourfields Stadium, after citing construction space constraints.
Responding to an inquiry by the chairperson of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Youth, Sports, Arts and Recreation, Mathias Tongofa, at Sizinda Vocational Training yesterday, the council's senior architect Partson Mashamba said a technical analysis showed that for bucket seats to be erected, the stadium's carrying capacity would have to be drastically reduced.
"We are not able to install bucket seats because the space between is not wide enough. The only way around that is to destroy the entire terraces," said Mashamba.
Chronicle Sport recently gathered that installing bucket seats at Barbourfields would cost slightly above US$1.2 million.
Mashamba said besides the issue of bucket seats, they were also yet to install floodlights whose cost stands at US$75 million.
A member of the committee Omega Sibanda said it was unfortunate that besides visits from ministries of Local Government and Sports, there was never any mention of the challenges faced by council.
He said residents must now psyche themselves to the reality that the city will never again play host to international football.
"It's an unfortunate situation though. This thing was never mentioned before. We had two ministries moving around trying to sort out the issue of stadia, but unfortunately we have such a report today that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. They are talking about space to erect bucket seats because they are saying their biggest challenge is terraces which have to be destroyed. This means Barbourfields Stadium is out; let's not talk about Barbourfields Stadium," said Sibanda.
"This is a very big challenge which they should have communicated through the Ministry of Sport, but they were just quiet until today and I'm sure the ministry also got to know about this today. As we stand forget about international football in Bulawayo.
"They said BF is 85 percent renovated, but from the look of things, it's only five percent through because the bucket seats are an integral part wanted by Caf," said Sibanda.
Responding to an inquiry by the chairperson of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Youth, Sports, Arts and Recreation, Mathias Tongofa, at Sizinda Vocational Training yesterday, the council's senior architect Partson Mashamba said a technical analysis showed that for bucket seats to be erected, the stadium's carrying capacity would have to be drastically reduced.
"We are not able to install bucket seats because the space between is not wide enough. The only way around that is to destroy the entire terraces," said Mashamba.
Chronicle Sport recently gathered that installing bucket seats at Barbourfields would cost slightly above US$1.2 million.
Mashamba said besides the issue of bucket seats, they were also yet to install floodlights whose cost stands at US$75 million.
A member of the committee Omega Sibanda said it was unfortunate that besides visits from ministries of Local Government and Sports, there was never any mention of the challenges faced by council.
He said residents must now psyche themselves to the reality that the city will never again play host to international football.
"It's an unfortunate situation though. This thing was never mentioned before. We had two ministries moving around trying to sort out the issue of stadia, but unfortunately we have such a report today that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. They are talking about space to erect bucket seats because they are saying their biggest challenge is terraces which have to be destroyed. This means Barbourfields Stadium is out; let's not talk about Barbourfields Stadium," said Sibanda.
"This is a very big challenge which they should have communicated through the Ministry of Sport, but they were just quiet until today and I'm sure the ministry also got to know about this today. As we stand forget about international football in Bulawayo.
"They said BF is 85 percent renovated, but from the look of things, it's only five percent through because the bucket seats are an integral part wanted by Caf," said Sibanda.
Source - The Chronicle
