Multimillion basketball court commissioned at Campbellville

A spanking new all-weather basketball court, equipped with lights and bleachers, is the new highlight of the Campbellville Housing Scheme.
Executed by the Public Works Ministry after the community’s old court was moved to facilitate the four-lane Conversation Tree road project, the new basketball court was officially commissioned on Sunday.
Reflecting on the Government of Guyana’s commitment to ensuring the court was replaced, Public Works Minister Juan Edghill also shared thoughts of the Ministry sponsoring a tournament at the venue.

Edghill recollected, “Coming out of that consultation and discussions with Kester and his team, we looked at the alignment ‘cause the last thing we want to do in development is disrupt people’s lives or to create inconveniences; we realised that there was no way we could’ve saved that hard court that the guys would play on. And we made a commitment, Vice President [Bharrat] Jagdeo, myself, to the guys that night that we will give them back a facility.”
“I look forward and I believe I can speak to this, the Ministry of Public Works, at least for the next three years, will sponsor a tournament right here, once every year. We’ll make sure you get the trophies, the prizes and everything,” Edghill later announced.
He continued, “I would like to see teams from around Georgetown. You know why I want us to do that? Because when teams come here to play and they appreciate what is here, we’ll be able to transfer the garbage dump, the place where everybody throwing old stuff into facilities like this, because communities will realise what is at waste when we allow people to do that kind of stuff.”

Meanwhile, Guyana Basketball Federation (GBF) Vice President Rawle Toney expressed hopes of seeing similar high-calibre courts being built.
“Additionally, this facility, in terms of the surface, not many of it exist in the region, in the Caribbean, none of its kind in Guyana and definitely the Basketball Federation would be encouraging clubs and our other affiliates to host tournaments and bring the game back to the community. We also hope this would be the standard of basketball courts around the country, so, it’s the first and hopefully, not the last,” Toney remarked.
Also present at Sunday’s commissioning was Minister within the Culture, Youth and Sport Ministry, Steven Jacobs, who gave an assurance of similar facilities being undertaken in the future.
Minister Jacobs assured, “There will be a number of facilities of this kind, stretched right across the entire country. I say that now because you have a massive rollout of multipurpose turfs in schools and then you also have rehabilitation works in community grounds, because we want to encourage community involvement and create spaces for the community and persons to come out and play, to develop their skills and talents.”
Competitive action is set to soon visit the Campbellville court, with a 3×3 tournament set to be hosted in the near future.