No decision yet on completing Taruba stadium:Moonilal

The government of Trinidad & Tobago expects to make a final decision by December on what to do about the unfinished Taruba Stadium which was started several years ago by the Manning PNM administration.

Apart from being many years behind schedule, the stadium has cost nearly $1 billion, more than four times the original budgeted cost.

Housing Minister Dr Roodal Moonilal said Friday the estimate is that it could take another $200 million to complete. Speaking on morning television, the minister said the government is still making an assessment of the project to determine how to proceed.

"We may have to rethink the product, the use of it. Rather than international cricket it may well be a venue for Secondary Schools cricket, a Secondary School Academy and so on," Moonilal said.

"So we are looking at what has to be done to complete it. Now about $1 billion has been spent so there is a strong argument that this should not be abandoned," he added.

"You have to spend a few million dollars just on infrastructure. A lot of these projects, what happens is that you build and you build quickly but you don't put proper infrastructure.

"Whether it is housing or stadium or anything, as soon as it rains you find the ground floors flooded and you lose because you have to go and spend more. So it is a serious problem, infrastructure, but we are hoping. 

"We always said by December, we would have a position in terms of going forward. So we do have some professionals at UDeCOTT looking at it to see what is the lowest cost in order to complete this project," Moonilal said.