Lautoka Swimming Pool Incurs Additional Costs
Lautoka’s new aquatic swimming pool will now cost around $12.6 million to complete, increasing from an initial amount of $7.3m announced in May this year. This was confirmed yesterday by the Lautoka city council chief executive officer Jone Nakauvadra.
Without going into specifics, Mr Nakauvadra attributed the rise to increased construction costs.
Minister for Local Government, Housing, Community Development, Infrastructure and Transport Parveen Bala, while officiating at the ground breaking ceremony on May 4 last year had said the project was estimated to cost around $7.3 million. Mr Bala said construction would take approximately 12 months to completed.
Mr Nakauvadra said other costs have come up and this was mainly to get the aquatic centre to be the best in Fiji.
The aquatic centre will have an Olympic standard 50x10 metres laned competition pools.
Also included will be 25x8m laned warm up pools and a children’s pool with relevant facilities.
The second phase of the project would see the construction of a modern pavilion which would allow the hosting of international swimming competitions.
“As of now we have completed the filling in of the competition and warm up pools with cement,” Mr Nakauvadra said.
“That means that around 70 percent of the works have been completed and the good weather in the west has helped the project move along.
“The children’s pool is around 30 percent completed.”
Mr Nakauvadra says he expects the pools to be completed by June next year.
Meanwhile the Council is spending an additional $60,000 on the construction extra satellite markets. Earlier this month Mr Bala opened the new Tavakubu Satellite Market for vendors.
“There has been an increased demand from vendors living in the area for extra stalls to be built.”
“So we have budgeted $60,000 to build 10 extra stalls to meet the demand.”
“We have already started the construction of the new stalls and expect to finish that within a short time span,” Mr Nakauvadra said.