GASA, Ramson working on swimmers’ access to facilities

The Guyana Amateur Swimming Association (GASA), through its President Dwayne Scott, has hinted at the possibility of having several more venues to facilitate competitive swimming.
This announcement was made on the heels of Scott meeting with Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Charles Ramson Jr, in an initiative involving the Minister meeting with Sports Association heads every month.
“Additionally, the Minister, along with his team, is working on some improvements at both the Aquatic Centre and Colgrain, and he is currently working on allowing us access again to the Castellani House,” Scott shared in an invited comment.
Giving a more in-depth update on how this move is going, Scott explained, “Colgrain should be up and running before the end of the month. He specifically wanted us to use Colgrain for our clinic programme, which is for young swimmers’ development; and he’d indicated that, maybe by the end of March, we should have access to Castellani House.”
Expectedly, these facilities will see some rehab work before the GASA begins to utilise them.
“Both facilities will undergo some level of rehabilitation, which is good for swimming, because now it will allow us access to more facilities within Georgetown. We’ve also discussed with the Minister the possibility of expanding swimming activities outside of the Georgetown region or boundaries,” Scott revealed.
He continued by saying, “We’ve looked at the possibilities of Region 3. We’ve discussed the possibility of revisiting the pool facility at the Uitvlugt Estate. We’ve discussed the Linden Facility, and we discussed the Berbice Facility. The Minister gave us assurances that he will work to have a facility available in Region 3, and he will also take a look at the Uitvlugt Facility to see what can be done, so that we can have access to it, perhaps after the passing of the next budget.
“For the Linden situation, we are supposed to be working to get a dedicated time slot for the Linden athletes to use a facility. This’ll have to go through NICIL, because it’s under their management. The Minister will take the lead in that, with our support, in ensuring that athletes have access to the facilities (so) that they can train. Of course, some of these will happen after the COVID restrictions.”
Scott went on to share plans for a new swimming facility at Linden, which would go a long way in assisting the mining town to produce more competitive swimmers.
“More importantly, he indicated that there is a plan to put a new pool at Linden, only for competitive swimming. These plans will be unveiled to you by the Minister at some point, based on what is available and how the plans roll out.
“Obviously, it should be launching at some point in time, along same lines with the synthetic track that has been developed at Linden. Again, the location and the details on that will be provided to you by the Minister,” Scott said.