Hannah: No need to build new stadiums for now

PETALING JAYA: The Youth and Sports Ministry have no plans to build a new stadium which will eventually become a problematic project especially if it is going to be difficult to maintain the facilities in the first place.

Youth and Sports Minister Hannah Yeoh, in pointing out the National Stadium in Bukit Jalil as an example, said the venue often faced constraints involving overlapping events lately but that was not a reason to construct a new venue.

What’s more important is to upgrade the stadium, including repairing other sports venues to ensure that there are no problems when holding any sporting events.

“We are looking at not only the main stadium but we want to make sure that it is the government’s responsibility together with the state governments to build up sports,” she said.

“Our priority is not to build but we want to know how to manage the upgrading works and supervision after that.

“At the same time, we don’t have any plans to get busy building stadiums.

“If you look at other states, they get busy building stadiums during Sukma (Malaysia Games) but supervision is quite difficult after that.

“So we have no plans to continue building (stadiums) and it is better to use the existing venues.’’

Many sports facilities built by previous Sukma hosts have turned into white elephants as they are not fully utilised and not properly maintained in their respective states.

The Asean Federation Football Cup (AFF) match that took place at the National Stadium last month was also affected due to the installation of the stage for Taiwanese artist Jay Chou’s concert and the national team lost the potential support of 21,000 supporters.

This led to an outcry from football supporters and many parties urged the government to build another stadium specifically for football matches and also to hold other activities.

The National Stadium is the only venue to cater for big scale events in the Klang Valley as the Shah Alam Stadium and the Malawati Indoor Stadium in Selangor will be demolished soon for a new state-of-the-art complex.