By IANS,
New Delhi: “You will be hearing more from me!” Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) chief Mike Fennell told the organisers of the 2010 Games, specially committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi, as he sought a faster pace of work in areas like venues development, transport and catering.
“We have noticed a lot of progress during this visit… We still have areas of concern and there is a lot of work that needs to be done. We have discussed all this openly and practically (with authorities) already…with the approach taken by Mr Kalmadi and his team, we feel confident, (we) would be achieving or even surpassing expectations,” Fennell said.
“But while we make these complementary remarks, I still want give a warning that there is a lot to be done and we won’t let up,” he said at a press conference about the four-day long Chefs de Mission seminar, where the representatives of 71 participating nations were briefed on security and other preparations for the Games to be held here Oct 3-14.
Turning to Kalmadi sitting next to him, Fenell said: “I promise you that you will be hearing a lot more from me as we go along and we will be monitoring many areas that need work and which we really need to be on top of.”
He, however, added that while the CGF was concerned about progress in some areas in Delhi, the situation was similar ahead of the Games events in other cities like Melbourne and Manchester when they were “extremely nervous” about preparations like the lacking Games village capacity and behind schedule venue preparations.
Fennell Wednesday visited the Games Village along with the Chefs de Mission and said that the village may just be “one of the best” yet.
The members of the delegation were also briefed by Delhi Police commissioner Y.S. Dadwal on the stringent security arrangements for the event.
While Fennell was satisfied about security of players, he expressed concern about venues, specifically pointing out that the swimming events venue (the Talkatora stadium), the athletics venue (Nehru Stadium) as well as the weightlifting venue being constructed nearby remained “top concerns” since he wasn’t sure if they would be ready for “test events”.
He lamented that venue construction did not come under the Games organisers and the Delhi government agencies promised the work would be completed latest by the end of June. “We have accepted those dates since these were prepared by professionals,” Fennell said.
Among other areas of concern Fennell cited were transportation and catering.
He hoped that the travel for players would be as seamless and point to point as the delegation had received during the seminar, since Delhi was ordinarily “not an easy city to move around in”.
Kalmadi said that the upcoming integrated ticketing system for the Metro and Delhi Transport Corporation buses would encourage more usage of public transport.