We have been told that the reason, prior to offering free entrance to Kensington Oval, why the attendance to the CWC matches so far have been so low is due to the elimination of India and Pakistan.
As these countries participation could in no fair way be guaranteed, it seems strange there appeared to be no plan B in place to minimise the financial damage.
The quoted ’75,000 cruise ships passengers’ did not require a Caricom visa, so let us concentrate of the land based visitors.
The last media reference to the Caricom visa I can find is in a Melissa Wickham article entitled ‘Lets check it out’ which appeared in the Nation on 1st April 2007.
Ms Wickham stated ’30,000 have already been issued with an estimated 5,000 more to be issued before the end of CWC’.
Deputy Prime Minister, Mia Motley is the chairperson of the Caricom Committee for CWC 2007 security, and as such had overall responsibility for the visa implementation.
Ms Motley, can therefore easily state exactly how many visas were issued to Indian and Pakistani nations.
And then give the public a breakdown of how many of the total was issued to cricket teams and their support staff, members of the media and all other groups that would not necessarily fall under the description of visiting cricket fans.
Of course, it wasn’t just Indian and Pakistani nationals who required the CariCom visas.
Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates, Australia, New Zealand and any others I have not mentioned also required them.
So if you add up the cricket fans from all the other countries who required visas, then it should not be difficult to quantify the negative effective the loss of India and Pakistan had on attendance.
With the financial implications to our tourism industry still to be evaluated, I am sure putting this information into the public (taxpayers) domain would go a long way to pacify concerned citizens.
Adrian Loveridge
16 April 2007
Update:
After reading the BLP blog tonight I think I now know why the Caribbean governments became sold on the idea of CWC by Chris Dehring.
Lessons from Cricket
April 18th, 2007 · 7 Comments
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In all this we have a West Indies team to rebuild. In fact we have to put in place a plan for the full usage of the region�s newest assets, our stadiums. We must now zero in on all our sportsmen and sportswomen to ensure that they are included in a development programme to maximize the use of these facilities for their social and economic benefit. The world is in our grasp, let�s reach out and hold it.
Someone said on BFP that Adrian Loveridge will never ever become Minister of Tourism. If this is what the DLP has promised him, then he is waiting in vain. No one is paying any attention to his bogus stats. Except of course the DLP and its crazy, fanatical, uneducted, supporters.
My compliments to Mr Loveridge for his ongoing struggles with the adminstration and their lack of direction and leadership.
He has been the one person that has been willing to take the fight to Muscle Mary and expose him for what he is ie a compulsive Liar of serious proportions having stated that his efforts have been honest and sincere and if used properly they could serve the same Muscle Mary usefully.
But Muscle Mary is way to arrogrant to take anyones advice so he can take all the blame for his stupidity as well.
Breaking news Percy Sonn, the ICC’s president who has been as high-profile as the invisible man, has appeared in the stands, the first sighting of him since the opening ceremony. He was horizontal and, as far as we could see, had trousers at full mast. He was holding a glass, but they are allowed in the VIP enclosures as the great and the good of the game are considered sensible enough to know how to behave and are trusted not to hurl them at any passing fielder.
Any sight of Owen Arthur?????
Does Adrian Loveridge have any real aspirations in the direction of becoming Tourism Minister? Would anyone want that job? it’s such a fickle industry!
No, Minister.
I would love to be Minister of Tourism but as a white Englishman, it probably would never happened again (Peter Morgan).
I believe I could however play a very supportive role in making a significant improvement.
Sauna..
PLEASE, PLEASE just identify for the public ONE single ‘bogus stats’. If it has happened, I am ready to apologise.
Will Minister Lynch apologise for his BOGUS STATS?
‘90,000’ long stay visitors for the CWC Final week.
Plus another ‘75,000 cruise ship passengers’
Only ‘500 luxury villa rooms’
‘NO LOAN! (categoricaly) NO LOAN by Government to charter the Carnival Destiny’
Bearing in mind, Tourism is frequently heralded as our Number ONE industry.
Who do think in the industry, whether in Barbados or across the region is going to listen to Minister Lynch now?
Certainly the BLP cannot avoid answering some hard questions about CWC 2007. We all wait with baited breath to hear the tally!
A 16 000-seat temporary stand erected for the World Cup will boost capacity to 27 000 for the tournament. It will later be removed to reveal a grassy spectators’ hill and pool, providing what Arup Associates lead architect, Dipesh Patel, describes as ‘an echo of the coastal landscape of Barbados’.
The official capacity of the old ground was 15,000, although more were crammed in on occasions. In more recent times, the locals were often outnumbered by tourists (Barbados being a tourism centre) never more so than when England visited. The pitches at Bridgetown are generally fast and bouncy, but generally favour the batsmen.
The ground was closed down at the end of the 2004-05 season and demolished in order that a new stadium could be built at a cost of $135 million in time for the World Cup, with the capacity being raised from 12,500 to 28,000
the above are extracts from cricketinfo.org however my point here is that pior to CWC our stadium seated 12,500 persons with as they said above being crammed to 15,000 what we have achieved with the redevelopment of the oval with a new capacity of 28,000 if we remove the temporary stand which is stated to hold 16,000 people we now have a stadium with a capacity of 12,000 persons the figures suggest that we have spent over $ 300 mill and we have not achieved a single increase in the seating, how can this be allowed to happen???
Is this really what we set out to do or are we just so stupid that these politicans can take us for a ride like this??
In summary we spend $ 300 mill on a stadium and ended up with not one single seat more than what we destroyed the old one for in the first place.
We actually have decline in overall seating by 500 persons.