Just 18 days left, but OC yet to hit bulls-eye at Dr Karni shooting range

Published>Wed, Sep 15 10 06:22 AM

With barely half a month left for the Commonwealth Games, the city has been beautified for the benefit of athletes and tourists who will be visiting the Capital during the period. However, at the Dr Karni Singh Shooting Range in Tughluqabad, labourers continue to work at a frantic pace ? hoping to finish it on time.

Work on most of the shooting ranges inside the stadium has been finished, but the final range is far from complete.

When Newsline visited the stadium, workers could be seen near the entrance ? surrounded by scattered bricks and piles of cement.

Though the broadcasting compound is a temporary structure, it still seemed to require a lot of work. The noise emanating from the machinery on the site was so unbearably loud that OC officials had to request the labourers to stop working for a while, so they could address the media.

Everything looked prim and proper inside the stadium, but Newsline found that work was still being taken up on the field of play (FOP) toilets in the final range. The targets were yet to be fixed, but not a worker was in sight there.

On the brighter side, the seating arrangements had already been made and targets at other ranges, such as the 10 m, 25 m and 100 m ones, had already been fixed. The flooring hadn't been laid at the final range, and could be seen folded inside. Acknowledging that there wasn't time enough for actual saplings to grow and flower by the start of the Games, the organisers had 'planted' artificial ones in flower pots across all the ranges.

Outside the stadium, saplings were yet to be planted on a patch of earth. Two stray dogs were seen wandering inside the range.

Speaking about the shooting range, located at a distance of 21 km from the Games Village, venue manager Manmeet Singh said, "This stadium is even better than the Beijing one as we have 80 shooting ranges. They had just 60."

Only eight athletes will reach the final range, Singh added.

Stating that the range has a four-tier security cover, OC officials said that they are equipped with metal detectors, scanners, radio frequency readers and tyre busters.

Source: Web Search