The ManicaPost
Ray Bande
Senior Reporter
MUTARE City Council has kick-started the initiative to place bucket seats in Manicaland’s ceremonial home of football — Sakubva Stadium — as the local authority now puts final touches to the drainage and turf renovations that began last year.
Sakubva Stadium was closed for renovations for the greater part of last year, and Mutare City Council — Qthe custodians of the facility — had earmarked the end of last year as the deadline for the completion of the drainage and turf renovations.
Mutare City Council chose to go for the broke after the local authority insisted on its long term renovations of the turf and drainage system at Sakubva Stadium, that started on July 1 last year and targeted, back then, to last for seven months.
The development means that football crazy fans of Mutare had to endure a whole year without top-flight league action on their doorstep as the facility underwent the long term turf and drainage system renovations.
The sole Mutare-based top-flight league outfit, Manica Diamonds, had to play their home matches more than 360km away in Triangle, while Eastern Region Division One teams had to settle for the insecure Manicaland Agriculture Showgrounds Sports Arena.
True to their word, the local authority managed to meet their target on the costly drainage and turf renovations with final touches now being executed.
A visit to the facility this week revealed that the drainage work is now complete, while workers are now leveling the playing field by backfilling top soil in selected areas.
Technically, this means Sakubva Stadium will be available for use this year when the domestic football top-flight league resumes, tentatively in March.
Mutare City Council acting Town Clerk, Blessing Kapuya Chafesuka told Post Sport that the initiative to have bucket seats installed in Sakubva Stadium is now underway, with the tendering procedure expected to be rolled out anytime from now.
Chafesuka expressed satisfaction on the progress made on the turf and drainage works.
“We are happy that we managed to work on the drainage system that had been dysfunctional for years due to lack of regular maintenance works.
“The spectrum of renovation works on the drainage system also covered the installation of a new turf, and we are happy that we managed to do that within the timeframe that we had set out to execute the task.
“We are not resting on our laurels, and to that end, the initiative to have bucket seats installed in Sakubva Stadium is now underway, with the initial tendering procedure expected to be rolled out anytime from now,” said Mutare City Council acting Town Clerk.
Chafesuka said the installation of bucket seats will be done in phases.
“Owing to limited resources, we cannot have bucket seats installed all over the whole stadium at once. Therefore, after going to tender, once we get a contractor, we hope we will be able to install bucket seats in phases,” he said.
The old drainage system had collapsed in the pitch and the major reason was heavy trucks and machinery which came in and out of the stadium using the stadium for various programmes over the decades.
Secondly, some sections of the system were clay clogged, thereby seriously slowing the vertical draining.
The contractor who worked on the drainage system did not dismantle the entire existing system, but complemented it with a new system.
The new system has drainage trenches which are 60 to 80cm deep.
At the bottom of the trench is a sand bedding of 10cm, this was followed by a drainage pipe which connects two ends of the inner drainage ring.
The perforated drainage pipes are covered by three quarters stones averaging 50-60cm.
Thereafter, there is 10-20cm sand blanket.
The ring drainages were opened, cleaned up and repairedin damaged areas.
From the tests done on the covered drained, it was noted that the lines are now draining superbly.
Mutare City Council also renovated the nearby Chisamba Ground in order to reduce pressure on Sakubva Stadium when it eventually reopens.
