Comparing apples with pears

NELSPRUIT – When compared to King’s Park Swimming Pool complex in the heart of Kwazulu-Natal, the lack of a municipality’s interest in supporting one of South Africa’s best performing sports becomes more apparent at the Van Riebeeck Park complex.

It has had constant pressure from the media and interest groups over the span of a year to convince Mbombela Local Municipality (MLM) to upgrade the swimming pool and its surrounding facilities.

In 2012 it was reported that swimmers were injuring themselves on sharp shards of broken tiles lining the pool, and that the roof covering the change rooms was dangerously close to collapsing because of rotting roof trusses.

A meeting was called and a project manager assigned. The work finally started on the main building after a number of designs were looked at and debated over giving hope to swimming fraternities across the province.

“We were so relieved and thought that finally we would have a facility capable of hosting the major national, even international events we are currently unable to even tender for,” said Swimming Mpumalanga chairman, Mr Emile van Veenhuyssen.

The Nelspruit municipal pool is one of just five olympic-standard pools in the entire country. If correctly maintained and managed, Van Riebeeck Park could become a viable source of income to the municipality by hosting national-level water-sports events there.

“Promises were made not only to us, but to the general public that the facility would receive a facelift and we would have a swimming pool we could be proud of. After four months and millions of funds invested in this project, we still have the same pool and the roof trusses over the change rooms are still rotten. Essentially what they’ve done here is build a new office for the supervisor, that’s it. They’ve done absolutely nothing for the sport or swimmers.”

The R4 million office block that forms the main entrance to the complex boasts excessively large offices, the purpose of which has still not been identified. The entrance now houses a state-of-the art turnstile system to control access to the facility, which still has not been made operational. The original problem areas that led to the outcry for an upgrade – the rotting roof trusses – have been left unchanged. No work was done to the change rooms, the surface area of the poolside, the ageing pump system or the broken tiles.

“Not one aspect of the agreed plan for this site was adhered to. Everything discussed and agreed upon seems to have been totally discarded. We needed council to fix the problems that were placing the lives of the swimmers and the general public in danger. We did not need the office now because it solves absolutely nothing.”

An official enquiry has been sent to the MLM Communications Department and at the time of going to print, no comment had been received.