By Daraine Luton, Staff Reporter
The National Stadium was refurbished at huge cost to host the 2002 IAAF/Coca-Cola World Junior Championships.
THE INTER-SECONDARY Schools Sports Association (ISSA) is facing a massive $4.12m bill for rental of the National Stadium facilities for the April 8-12 Boys and Girls Championships.
Vice-president of ISSA and the head of the committee responsible for athletics, Branford Gayle, yesterday described the rental cost as 'alarmingly high.'
"We might not be able to afford it," said the Manchester High school principal.
"We have gotten a quotation as to the daily cost of renting the stadium facilities. We have also been given a cost as to the east field and the stadium itself, excluding the floodlights."
Gayle revealed that the costs, as outlined by Independence Park Limited, the company in charge of managing the complex, are "$750,000 per day for the National Stadium and $75,000 per day for the east field".
Those costs exclude the use of the lights. According to Gayle a separate contract for lights over the five days has to be signed with the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS).
"If you calculate the cost per day, it is $825,000 for both fields and multiply that by five days you will get the bill we are facing and that does not include floodlights," the ISSA vice-president said.
In addition, ISSA will be called on to carry the cost for security and cleaning of the complex.
When asked whether or not ISSA will have to resort to using only one of the facilities, Gayle told The Gleaner: "It has always been the case that we use the National Stadium as the arena for competition and the east field as a warm up and marshalling area.
"That is the plan, the ISSA executive is scheduled to meet later this week and I don't know if there will be a change in plan," he added.
Not surprisingly, he is concerned that the premier athletics meet for high schools might be significantly handicapped by the high rental cost.
"The budget for 'champs' this year is $7-million and if $4-million is to be used to pay for the National Stadium then a lot of things may not happen but I am not pre-empting anything," added the Manchester High principal.
"If we have to pay $4-million plus to use the Stadium plus do the other things we have to do we might be running into a bill of about $9-million which means that 'champs' will not be economically sustainable."
Gayle noted that the increase in cost is not a blow to athletics only but to other sports that normally benefit from the money earned at the Boys and Girls Champs gate.
"The others sports such as netball, table tennis, tennis etc., do not attract sponsors, nobody wants to sponsor them so ISSA has to foot the bill," he said revealing that a portion of the 'champs' proceeds is directed to the staging of these competitions.
The ISSA vice-president said in the past sponsorship amounted to about 40 percent of cost but he has no idea how much they (the sponsors) will absorb this year.
Last year ISSA sustained heavy losses when the annual championships was moved to G.C. Foster College to facilitate the refurbishing of the National Stadium for the IAAF/Coca-Cola World Junior Championships. It cost over US$14m to modernise the complex and bring it up to international standards.
When The Gleaner tried to get a comment from the chairman of Independence Park Limited, Jamaica Olympic Association president Mike Fennell, we were told he was off the island and nobody else could speak on the issue.
