The town, which has many feathers in its cap, will soon find a place in the sports map of the State, Minister for Sports Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan has said. He was commissioning the fitness centre built at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium at Nagambadom on Sunday.
According to him, work on the Rs.124-crore National Sports Institute being planned at Chingavanom will commence within two months. “Once the institute becomes a reality, young sports talents in the State will be able to train under eminent coaches,” he said.
The institute will come up on the campus of the Travancore Electro-Chemical Industries Limited unit, which was closed down in 1999.
Along with it, the State government has also extended support for the construction of an indoor stadium at Nagambadom. The indoor stadium would have state-of-the-art facilities, he said. The flooring alone would cost Rs.1.5 crore.
Mr Radhakrishnan said the government had also given the go ahead for raising the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium ground which gets flooded during the monsoon. Plans were also afoot for synthetic turfing of the ground, he added. The construction of a swimming pool that meets Olympics standards was also on the anvil, he said.
Facilities at the fitness centre opened as part of the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium complex would not be confined to sportspersons alone, Mr. Radhakrishnan said. The facilities would be made available to the public from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. and from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Though the services would be free of cost in the beginning, users would have to pay a service charge later, he added.
The fitness centre would be transferred to the indoor stadium once its work was completed, said Padmini Thomas, president, Kerala State Sports Council.
