PORT VILA, (RNZI) —-The organising committee for the 2017 Pacific Mini Games remain confident key venues will be delivered on time, provided the weather gods are on their side.
Sunday marked one year until the scheduled start of the Games in Port Vila.
The construction of the main Korman complex had suffered a series of delays since Cyclone Pam struck Vanuatu in March last year.
The CEO of Van2017 organising committee, Clint Flood, said they would like to be further along in their plans but good progress is being made.
“The contractor is going probably 18 hours a day right now…as that particular contractor finishes a couple of other big jobs in Port Vila they’re going to shift some of their staff down so every day we see some progress.”
“The key is this next few months, as we enter the rainy season, hopefully the rain won’t delay things and most of the concrete has been poured, they’re now doing the structural work. Again, we’re pretty confident they will be delivered,” he said.
“We faced the same situation when I was (on the organising committee for the 2015 Pacific Games) in Papua New Guinea where we’re not quite sure to the bitter end what’s going to be delivered,” according to Ford.
“As long as we have a good relationship with the contractor that they can say, “ok we can’t quite finish this room but we can finish this room,” then we’re happy and we’ve got a very good dialogue now going with the contractor there.”
“That’s been a big improvement – we didn’t really have any access to the contractor before but now we speak actually on a daily basis about things so that’s all good.”
Clint Flood said they won’t see completed venues or a complete Korman site until at least the end of October and probably the first two weeks of November.
