No land for high-tech sport centre

THE Sport Ministry is struggling to acquire land on which to build a high-performance centre for athletes.

Deputy Sport Minister Pohamba Shifeta said two years of negotiations with the City of Windhoek are yet to yield success. He said the ideal location is a portion of land close to the Independence Stadium and Hage Geingob Rugby Stadium.The purpose of this centre would be to help harness the country’s talent and help raise the level of competitiveness of the already established sport stars, he said. ‘It is a matter of land [otherwise] we would have started building already because we have budgeted this facility for almost two years now,’ Shifeta told The Namibian Sport.’We hope to get the land around that part of Olympia which is an ideal venue since we have most of the sport facilities there already. Once we we succeed in that we are ready to erect this high performance centre there.’ Shifeta said having a centre of this nature would be a priceless advantage for the country.’The centre is a necessity right now. We currently do not have any in Namibia and sending athletes to other countries is also expensive,’ the minister said.’We have potential and upcoming and sportsmen and women who have proved the abilities to make us proud provided that we nurture their potential and create environment conducive to enable them to unleash that.’