Alex football urges City to build them a stadium
ALEXANDRA – The City of Johannesburg is urged to consider building a new stadium in Alex to alleviate the congestion of current facilities.
The Alexandra Northrand Local Football Association has called on the City of Johannesburg to consider building another stadium for the sprawling township, to accommodate its ever-growing development league.
The call was made by the association’s secretary-general, Mafika Morajane, who conceded that current stadia facilities were no longer able to fully service its ever-expanding league.
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He was speaking in an exclusive interview with Alex News and revealed there were five more clubs that had joined the league. The majority of these clubs were based in the Far East Bank and River Park areas which are some of the most densely populated extensions in Alexandra.
In those two extensions alone, Morajane said there were already close to 10 clubs active in the area but there were still huge numbers of children who had no soccer clubs to join and this was a major concern for the association.
“What we need are sporting amenities in the area, which can allow us to establish a stream league in the area to accommodate the high numbers of children, but this can only be done if the City could consider building new stadia in the area to alleviate the congestion currently being experienced in the two facilities in old Alex and one in East Bank,” Morajane said.
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He said they had been engaging with the City to urge it to consider building a stadium in the Far East Bank. At one of the meetings, the association was asked to identify open land but when it did, housing settlements eventually took top priority.
“We have so far identified open land in the Marlboro area, which we hope the City can utilise to build the sporting facilities. We keep our fingers crossed that, it too, has not been earmarked for housing development,” said Morajane who added that he was perturbed by the fact that each time the City builds new housing settlements, they fail to take cognisance of the need to build sporting facilities in the process. “I would have expected such facilities and other amenities like parks to form part of the City’s integrated development plan,” he said.
At the time of going to press, the City of Johannesburg had not responded to requests for comment on the question of building an additional stadium in Alexandra.
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