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MCC: Trading Sacred Sports For Gambling Greed?
posted (April 8, 2016)
The MCC compound is turning into a parking lot. Well part of it anyway. In February the National Sports Council entered into an agreement with the Princess Ramada Hotel and Casino to allow them to use a portion of the MCC grounds for parking. The agreement was that the Management of Ramada would construct the facility and in turn they would be allowed to use it for customer parking - at a rental cost of course. But did footballers lose a sacred sporting space to greed and gamblers? The move has been much criticized, but according to Sports Minister of State Elodio Aragon, despite those critics, this type of public-private sector partnership is the way to go.

Hon. Elodio Aragon, Minister of State in the Ministry of Sports
"Partnering with Princess which will do many good things because one, it is going to alleviate the traffic congestion on that road. Two, we are getting close to anywhere between $80-$100 thousand dollars invested right now which is coming from the Princess Ramada company. They are investing in the parking area so we are getting a parking area for free. Apart from that, we are getting paid $2000 a month for them to use that parking area, and that $2000 a month goes right back into MCC to begin to put better lighting system, more care, and painting of the fence. If you see the work that is being done right now at the MCC, that is possible because of the public and private partnership that we have done. And we are not putting anything at risk from the MCC, there's no lease agreement, there's nothing. All we have is a memorandum of understanding that clearly favors us as the national sports council. Why? Because we could break that contract anytime, and it's not a contract for say, it's a memorandum of understanding. At any time we can go without any liability, but this is a partnership that is good so we are not intent on breaking that off. that has just started, its doing well for us so we are continuing with that and in no way, whenever there's a sporting event that will be held at MCC, it is only for us to inform one day ahead of time to the Princess Casino and Ramada that we will be using the facility and they will find elsewhere to park for that time. so what I'm saying it is a win-win situation for the National Sports Council and we are looking for more partnership like these, private and public partnership so that we can begin to do well for our sporting facilities. We could begin to generate more money for national sports council so in turn we can being to promote and spend more money on our sporting programs across country."

According to the Sports Council works at the MCC grounds parking lot should be completed by the next three weeks.

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