IS THE L.O.C. LOCKED DOWN?
Peeping Tom
Kaieteur News
March 25, 2007
There are still more questions than answers about just who is in charge of the preparations at the National Stadium for CWC 2007 beginning this week in Guyana. Even a press conference held Friday failed to provide any clear conclusive evidence as to whether the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) had been effectively locked out of the final preparations following a letter received last Saturday from a representative of the ICC CWC 2007.
A section of the press had reported on that letter in which it is claimed that the ICC CWC 2007 had indicated that another grouping would be taking over the arrangements at the Stadium as there had been a loss of confidence in the local authorities to get the job done.
The LOC had done a great deal of the preparatory work leading up to this week's games in Guyana and it would be extremely unfortunate and something of a national embarrassment if the official organizers of the tournament are or have had to make alternative arrangements to have the stadium site in a state of readiness for the first games that kick off this week.
For the President who has been making numerous detours to the stadium site and to the international hotels in close proximity, if there is indeed a loss of confidence in the local authorities, this will hurt his credibility since he has personally taken a hands-on approach to ensuring that Guyana is in a state of readiness for CWC 2007. I wonder just what are his views about the letter that the LOC was said to have received last week ?
A true picture will emerge if the correspondence received from the ICC CWC2007 is made public and if the official response is also made public. Then we will know what the concerns of the ICC CWC 2007 are, and what specific responses have been made by the LOC.
It would also be helpful if the nation can be told who is running the show at the stadium as at present. Is the local LOC in charge and just what role is the LOC playing as regards the stadium site?
To say I am disappointed in the reporting or rather lack of reporting by the Kaieteur News on this issue would be an understatement, I had expected that this newspaper would have been on top of the story and would have been able to provide the sort of conclusive details that the public needs to know.
We cannot expect to be perfect in all that we do. Guyana does not have the requisite experience in managing a process as extensive as the hosting of Cricket World Cup 2007. And therefore this is a completely new experience for us, something that we should learn from so that we can become better and more adept in the future when it comes to managing tournaments and their numerous spin-off effects.
The only way we can learn from our mistakes is if we are open to criticism. And one way to do this would be to open the entire process of Guyana 's staging of CWC 2007 to an independent audit to see what went wrong, what could have been done better and whether any person or persons need to be held accountable for the things that did not go right.
When this tournament was being organized we were told that everyone should come on board because this was a national effort and that national pride was at stake. That pride is not badly shaken by the reports appearing in the press about the possibility of a foreign agency taking over the final stages of preparations for CWC 2007.
An independent audit of the work done locally would I believe help to resolve some of the concerns after the tournament ended. But for the time being, the public is entitled to know whether there has been a vote of no confidence in the ability of Guyana to honour its obligations to the organizers and if so we need to know where the problem is and whose responsibility, because so long as Guyana is placed in an embarrassing situation, the equation boils down to saving face and saving pride.
Guyana has invested significantly in CWC 2007. The vast majority of Guyanese expect a whirlwind of benefits to emerge out of our holding this tournament in the region. At the least therefore it cannot be unreasonable for the public to demand some answers to some simple questions, the foremost being the present status of the LOC in so far as the stadium is concerned.