The National Hosting Authority (NHA) and The Honiara City Council (HCC) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for NHA to plan and facilitate the upgrading of the City Council’s public fields for athletes’ preparations.
The MOU was signed by NHA’s Executive Director; Christian Nieng and Director HCC’s Woman, Youth and Sports division; Fox Qwaina who is also the Games Facilities Committee Chair who was excused due to other commitments.
Present at the signing were the Honiara City Lord Mayor Hon. Eddie Siapu, Chairman for HCC’s sports Committee; Counsellor William Maemae, Project Management Unit (PMU) Executive Director; Eldon Tepa and staff from both NHA and HCC.
The Games Facilities Committee’s (GFC) key responsibilities are; to deliver the facilities for the 24 sports during SOL2023, delivering the games villages to house the athletes and also to provide training venues within Honiara for athletes to prepare to compete and challenge for medals at the games.
Under the MOU, NHA will upgrade two Community fields and one Multi-Purpose hall and few outdoor hard courts depending on availability of space and funding.
NHA and GFC will, through the Project Management Unit will be overlooking the upgrading of the Kukum and White River community fields.
In his remarks, NHA’s Executive Director Mr. Nieng stated that, “upgrading these community fields will give the communities more opportunities to access sports facilities by members of the three constituencies in Honiara”.
Mr. Nieng went on to mention that the proposed Multipurpose hall will give the communities more access to indoor sports facilities that will be available in the first quarter of 2022 for sports federations and clubs to access.
Lord Mayor Hon Siapu gratefully thanked the NHA for its timely support as it is also in the process of upgrading the current multipurpose hall through the New Zealand funded Multi-Purpose Hall Upgrade Project.
He went on to state that “through these upgrading projects, HCC will surely contribute towards the training and development of athletes in their preparation towards SOL2023”.
Now that there is approval to go ahead with the proposed plans for the upgrade of the community fields, the next stage of this MOU is for the HCC and NHA technical teams to finalize construction plans before going out to tender and before construction work can begin.
