President of the Liberta Sports Club and former West Indies fast bowler, Kenneth Benjamin, has expressed his disappointment over a lack of communication from the government after receiving word from what he labelled a ‘credible source’ that the club’s facility in Liberta has been removed as a practice venue for the upcoming ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.
Speaking recently on the Good Morning Jojo sports show, Benjamin said that although he is not upset over the venue’s removal, the decision by the government to not respond to several communications send by the Liberta Sports Club is both unprofessional and cowardly.
“We haven’t heard officially but I know for a fact that Liberta is not on the schedule. Obviously, there were some inspections done last week and Liberta wasn’t one and I heard, from a very good source, that Liberta has been taken off and I also heard that Liberta is not on the fixture for practice,” he said.
“To be honest, we’re not upset and we’re not cross with anyone because it is their thing and they use where they like, but they could have just called and said we are not going to bother to use Liberta anymore and we would have been fine with that.
“It now gives us more ease and less pressure to continue doing the work without trying to meet this June deadline.
“We’re just disappointed that they couldn’t have the [courage] to send an email, send a message or make a call and say that we are not going to use Liberta anymore,” he added.
Initially, Liberta was named alongside the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, Coolidge Cricket Ground and the Antigua Recreation Ground as the four practice venues targeted ahead of the World Cup. All venues were previously inspected by the ICC.
In light of this, Benjamin said the sports club wrote to the government requesting they be paid monies owed for hosting two previous competitions, amongst other requirements they thought necessary for the adequate preparation of the venue.
“They [government] were the ones that told ICC that Liberta is going to be a practice venue so we wrote to them asking that they pay us the monies owed to us and that they actually send a minimum of four workers to assist with the work and the monies that is to be derived from the upcoming World Cup, we start getting paid in 25 percent instalments from last month, and we haven’t received a response up to now and so after the under 15 tournament held by Cricket West Indies, we wrote to them and told them that the work at Liberta in terms of getting it ready for World Cup has come to a halt,” he said.
The former cricketer said the club is owed close to EC$20,000.
“We had asked that the monies owed to us from the Under 19 World Cup in 2022 be paid and that’s about $14,000-plus and, also, the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium had rented a roller from us last December leading up to that England tour when they didn’t have a roller and we still haven’t been paid, so we were there in Liberta being owed $19,000-plus by the government and we have to find resources to upgrade some parts of the ground,” Benjamin said.
Reports are that the club has since been paid for use of its roller at the stadium.
Work is however ongoing at the other three venues for the tournament which bowls off in June.