Confusion over Tk 4 crore electronic timer!
The Saif Powertec 33rd National Age-Group Swimming Championships produced 19 records over the past two days at the Syed Nazrul Islam Swimming Complex in Mirpur, but all the events are being timed using hand-timing, rendering the newly-installed electronic timer useless.
The National Sports Council (NSC) recently gave the Swimming Complex in Mipur a Tk 8.5 crore renovation and installed a new electronic timer worth approximately Tk 4 crore.
However, the electronic timer is not being used to record timings of the swimmers and officials claim the device is not working properly and is already out of date.
“I think the electronic timer is not a modern one because it is not working properly. Although we are yet to take control of this device, we will form a committee consisting of members from BUET and DU and then take control,” said Bangladesh Swimming Federation (BSF) general secretary BM Saif yesterday.
BSF joint secretary Hamidul Islam said: “A couple of lanes are not working altogether, so we can’t use it. Besides, the touch pad and announcement speaker are also not working well. So we left it.”
However, the engineer of the service provider Computer World BD, Epil Shikdar, denied all the allegations and claimed US-based Daktronics’ electronic timer was working fine.
“If there is any trouble with the electronic timer, it will show in the control panel. But we did not get any faults till now. Swimmers need to touch the pad properly to show the timing but fresh swimmers can’t push the touchpads properly,” Shikdar said, adding that they also provided electronic timers for cricket in Dhaka and Khulna.
“Besides, the electronic timer has a back-up timer like a hand watch but the federation is using hand timing instead.”
Comments