Mumbai, August 20: The Group of Ministers on Friday has directed all the agencies involved in the preparation of the Commonwealth Games to hand over the venues to the Organising Committee by August 31.
The testing of various equipment and networks to be installed will commence from September 1, the GoM decided.
The GoM on Commonwealth Games which met in Delhi also considered the status of the venues and took note of the problems being faced.
“This will all fall into place by August 31. The venues are already handed over. The network and technology that are to be installed will be installed by August 31. The testing will commence on September 1,” Secretary Sports and Youth Affairs Sindhu Shree Khullar said after the meeting.
The government had appointed 11 top bureaucrats to oversee the last phase of work for the mega event.
The officials, of the rank of additional secretary and joint secretary, were named by the Cabinet Secretariat and given charge of one stadium. The newly appointed officials will report directly to Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar.
The appointments came on a day when United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chief Sonia Gandhi made it plain that the October 3-14 Games were “a matter of national pride and efforts should be made to hold them successfully.
Earlier, Commonwealth Games Federation president Mike Fennell met Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on Thursday for about 30 minutes to discuss issues related to the Games and infrastructure development.
On August 14, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh directed officials to complete all pending works related to the Commonwealth Games expeditiously in a time-bound manner, after slippages in the time schedules of some of the construction works and deficiencies observed in some of the works.
The Commonwealth Games Organising Committee (CGOC) on August 6, took control of 11 competition venues to host the Oct 3-14 Games.
—Agencies