CWG Village will be ready in a few days: Diplomats assured

NEW DELHI - Commonwealth diplomats were assured Saturday that accommodation for players will be ready in a couple of days, with some of the smaller countries complaining that the facilities in the Games Village were still not up to the mark.

The Organising Committee (OC) for the Games opened the Village to the diplomats of the participating nations Saturday, after days of media criticism about the shoddy status of the residential zone.

Players have started moving into the athletes’ Village and their number shifting in will increase over the weekend. Most of the players who have moved into the Village had first checked into hotels after arriving in Delhi.

A South Asian diplomat said that while the external structure of the buildings was ready, there was still a lot of work left in the interiors in some of the towers. “The flats had been left uncared for and neglected, so there is a lot of cleaning up to be done,” he said.

The diplomat said that the training centre, dining hall and food and beverage service were “fine”. “But, there was a serious lack of dustbins in the Village, so people were throwing the trash on the sides,” he said.

According to the envoy, who has visited athletes’ Villages in other countries, the Organising Committee seems to suffer from the twin problems of “lack of coordination and lack of experience”.

“If they deploy enough manpower at the Village, then the issues can be smoothened out within one or two days. But, they are still not allotting enough manpower as we had been promised for each tower,” he said.

Another diplomat said that the African countries were rather resentful that their residential towers were still not clean and ready, as in the case of some other countries.

“Suresh Kalmadi (OC chairman), who was there during the visit, assured that there will be no favouritism in getting the facilities ready for different nations,” he said.

The athletes from most of the African countries will start reaching Delhi in batches next week.