Games village draws applause

NEW DELHI: India probably isn't doing all that badly on the Commonwealth Games front. Though CGF chief Michael Fennell isn't too convinced he recently penned down his apprehensions about Games preparations in a letter to the prime minister , many of the 70-odd delegates who are in the city for an inspection evidently felt otherwise. There were exceptions like Canada, the country which had lost out to Delhi in 2003 when pitching for Games at Hamilton.
The Games Village got a definite thumbs-up and other buildings too were pronounced to be doing okay with the representatives expressing a conviction about projects finally meeting deadlines, thanks to the large manpower.However, it was the logistics, the "software'' of the Games, that raised some concerns, largely because of the delayed submission of the transportation plans. Overall though things were pronounced satisfactory.
The Canadian outburst came with a long list of woes, the most pronounced of which seemed to be India's failure to have done block-booking of seats in airlines to fly in athletes and its reluctance to use overseas manpower for the Games. "There are issues we have about ticketing, accreditation, transportation, sports organisation and communication. There are a wide variety of international experts available in all these fields. We are using them for organising the Winter Games at Vancouver. It is a practice worldwide for host countries to take advantage of this expertise. India is not doing that,'' said Andrew Pipe, the Canadian delegate. On the transportation front, he said: "India had missed the federation's internal deadlines. We came with many questions which have not been answered yet and not getting satisfactory answers can have serious implications.'' Probed on what these deadlines were and which ones were yet to be met, he did not specify.
Not many it seemed had contracted his cynicism. Vivian Gungaram from Mauritius is very clear that the Commonwealth Games Village here is "much better than the one in Melbourne'' and as for transportation, if India managed to put the same system in place as it had done on Thursday morning, it would be "marvellous''. Both he and David Ojong from Cameron agreed that comparing India with Melbourne in terms of preparedness a year ago is not fair because that was three years ago and everything was different, most of all the world's financial situation.
Ojong said: "There is some concern about the buildings meeting deadlines but the kind of manpower you have it is obvious you will do it. Thyagaraj Stadium is in fact unique.'' Thyagaraj is a fully green structure.
Chris Jenkins who had come from Wales confessed that he was "impressed'' with the Village but also said that it is obvious many of the buildings "have missed original deadlines. But that's not so much of a worry as is the operational side of it. We have offered our help and we are very supportive of India. But the operational sides like accreditation, IT infrastructure etc have to be still worked on.''