On an inspection tour of two of the venues where the African Nations Cup will be played, Inas Mazhar examined the preparations being made The Local Organising Committee (LOC) of the 2006 African Nations Cup organised a one-day trip to Cairo and Port Said for LOC officials, national media representatives and CAF Communications Director Soliman Habuba to see for themselves what progress had been made towards hosting the ANC in January. The delegation was led by Youth Minister Mamdouh El-Beltagui. The delegation started its tour by visiting Cairo Stadium. The main venue of the 20-day tournament has been closed for a year and a half because of renovation. The construction company in charge since June 2003 had a budget of LE25 million. The total budget of refurbishing Cairo Stadium will reach LE140 million. A total of 685,000 workers are working on the stadium. El-Beltagui talked with the engineers as they were briefing the media on how far the work had gone. "We don't need to know what has happened," El-Beltagui said. "What the media and officials need to know is what is left and how long will it take to finish." The engineers expected the stadium would be ready by mid-November though the original deadline was mid-October. They explained that the delay was because of other construction works that came up which had not been planned. "The stadium is old," one engineer said. "It hasn't been renovated since it was built 45 years ago. Lots of its infrastructure is destroyed. While working in one area we would discover some problems in other places." El-Beltagui gave his own deadline: 1 November. "I want the stadium to be ready by the beginning of the month." The renovations include changing all the stadium's seats as well as erecting new seats for third class tickets to replace concrete benches. According to FIFA regulations, all classes should have seats, even though new seats have reduced the capacity of Cairo Stadium from 80,000 to 74,000. The media and press tribune have been modified to host 240 press and 120 commentary positions for radio and TV stations. Visitors had the chance to see the new media centre, press conference room and the mixed zone area. New electronic entry gates have been set up for electronic pin coded tickets. Because time was short, a visit to Ismailia, another site, was postponed. A date for Alexandria has yet to be fixed. The delegation thus headed directly to Port Said where they visited Port Said Stadium which will host Group D. Almost 90 per cent of the work has been completed. Final touches are needed in the dressing rooms, toilets and the referees rooms, as well as in the stands. El-Beltagui had requested the two-city tour in an attempt to calm media and public fears about Egypt's readiness to host the tournament, and to allow the officials concerned to assess the ongoing preparations. "Everything is going in the right direction and Egypt will host an extravagant event," El-Beltagui said. "There is no need to be concerned. We have called the media to witness for itself Egypt's readiness and I believe that after this visit the media will transfer such confidence to the public." But both the media and the public are concerned and have criticised the LOC. There are persistent doubts that Egypt can effectively host the African showpiece event. The issue escalated last week after Samir Zaher, the president of the Egyptian Football Association (EFA), publicly voiced concerns, at the FIFA congress in Marrakech, Morocco, over his country's readiness to host the cup. There is also a distinct lack of promotion of the tournament on radio, and television and billboard advertising. "The LOC has a certain budget and we are working within it and this doesn't include the promotion campaign," LOC President Hani Abou Reida said. "We can't start so early because it will cost a lot." There are also concerns over bureaucracy and how it is getting in the way of making decisions which could slow down preparations. "It's true we are working slowly but this is because everything should be authorised," Abou Reida conceded, adding, 'Everyone is blaming the LOC but we can't give final authorisation or take decisions on our own. We have to go to the supreme committee which includes ministers. The youth minister then goes to the prime minister. That takes time and there isn't enough time. But everyone believes that the LOC is responsible for everything. We are doing our best and fighting to make the cup a spectacular event." Four Egyptian cities will host the cup which takes place between 20 January and 10 February. The draw will take place at the Pyramids on 20 October at 9.30pm. Habuba was impressed with the work so far. "I can see that lots of work has been done in the past two months since my last inspection visit to the stadium. I am happy with the work and the facilities so far and can say that Egypt is going in the right direction." Habuba added that an ANC CAF committee will meet in Cairo on 18 October. "It will make an official inspection visit to all venues."
