The Fate of the Multi-Million Dollar Pool

The Lautoka Residents and Ratepayers Association is urging authorities to look into the alleged mismanagement of funds allocated for the completion of the Lautoka Swimming Pool.

This request comes in light of recent statements made by Minister for Housing and Local Government Maciu Katamotu during a parliamentary session, where he discussed plans to reassess the unfinished pool project.

Mr Katamotu’s response was prompted by remarks made by Opposition Member of Parliament Rinesh Sharma during the review of the Ministry of Local Government’s Annual Report 2018-2019, in which Sharma referenced a Fiji Sun article indicating potential demolition and reconstruction of the pool.

Background

An allocation of $107,630 was made in the 2022-2023 National Budget to complete the project and $4.5 million in the 2023-2024 National Budget.

An article published by this masthead in October 2020 reported that the project started as a $2m recreational pool project in 2015.

In 2017 stakeholders suggested that a competition pool should be built resulting in the cost increase to $7.8m. By the end of the same year, the cost increased to $12.6m.

The facility was to include an Olympic pool with a size of 50m x 25m, a warm-up pool measuring 25m x 20m and a children’s pool (26m x 18m).

Mr Sharma questioned the allocation of $4.5m by Government in the 2023-2024 National Budget to demolish and downsize the facility saying it was 90 per cent complete.

He said if there was a change of scope, then a project manager was needed to lead the project.

He said this was the level of wastage by the Coalition Government.

In response, Mr Katamotu said the ministry would rescope the project and figure out what needed to be changed or updated. He confirmed that the Lautoka City Council was looking for someone to lead the project and had invited bids from interested parties.

“There were several other challenges noted in our review which included supervision or monitoring of municipal council capital projects, poor monitoring of basic essential services such as waste collection and management,” he said.

Association president Narayan Reddy said an investigation needed to carry out to determine who authorised payment to the contractors.

“If the pool was not up to standard, why did they allow 98 per cent of the payment to go to the contractor,” Mr Reddy said.

“One contractor handled the project, one worked on the pool while the other did the amenities. The pool is ready to be used. What we fail to understand is why they want to demolish it when the water filtration is there. It’s just the amenities that are left.

“The association would like to call for an investigation to be done on what went wrong because the residents have been waiting for long enough to see the completion of the pool. We had written to the Lautoka City Council on this earlier this month calling for a meeting, but to date we have not received a single response.”

Numerous calls made to the Lautoka city council chief executive officer Mohammed Anees Khan remained unanswered, however Lautoka board of special administrators chair Ratu Tevita Momoedonu confirmed the swimming pool was not demolished, but being remodeled.

“A few omissions were made. I am aware that one side of the pool is short in measurement, so they are simply trying to address that. No one is demolishing the pool, but there was also mismanagement of funds by the very people harping on about it and a number of people need to be taken to task for this,” he said.

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