|
New National Stadium to remain `white elephant`
2008-05-11 10:42:36
By Staff Reporter
The new national stadium is to remain a white elephant for unspecified time due to the poor performance of Taifa Stars in international matches, it has been learnt.
The Prime Minister, Mizengo Pinda said in Dar es Salaam last week that a number of our national teams were performing very badly in their international assignments resulting in being eliminated in preliminary stages, thus defeating the purpose of constructing the stadium.
``This cannot be tolerated, we won`t remain spectators and continue cheering up foreign teams in a stadium we built ourselves,`` he charged.
``This problem has got to be arrested. The sports policy adopted in 1995 must be adhered to. Otherwise it makes no sense for the stadium to be used for international matches,`` he declared.
The stadium with a capacity of 60,000 people seated at a go was built at the cost of US Dollars 53.4million (53.4bn/-) by the government in collaboration with the Chinese government.
It was earlier scheduled to be handed over to the government in January this year, but the exercise was postponed to next month because of what has been described as `putting some final touches` in some areas.
It has however, already been used twice-when Taifa Stars played the Mozambique national side in the Africa Cup of Nations qualifying matches and a friendly encounter between Taifa Stars and Uganda.
Nevertheless the government has sanctioned the use of the stadium for an international match with Taifa Stars later this month.
|
