The Honourable Charles Griffith, M.P. Minister of Youth, Sports and Community Empowerment (center), among the delegation at the National Stadium.

Demolition work on the National Stadium at Waterford, St. Michael is set to start on April 15th, 2025.

This disclosure was made by the Honourable Charles Griffith, M.P. Minister of Youth, Sports and Community Empowerment, on Tuesday, April 1st, 2025, during a news conference at the facility.

It is expected that the demolition work will take three months to complete and will be carried out by a Chinese team in partnership with a local company, with jobs being generated for Barbadians.

Work on the construction of a new National Stadium for Barbadians will start immediately after the demolition work is finished.

The new National Stadium is being built at a cost of 80 million Barbados dollars through grant funding from the People’s Republic of China.

Minister Griffith also revealed that the Chinese firm, Beijing Construction Group is in Barbados to undertake the demolition process.

“Yes we took a while in getting here, but today is the start of the process and you will actually see the demolition taking place. I want persons to know it’s been long in coming but the Chinese are actually on island,” Minister Griffith remarked.

The Sports Minister said 25 work permits are already in place and another 15 have been submitted in relation to the team coming to do the construction.

He added that he was really pleased to see the level of interest Barbadians are paying to the project.

“For me it’s very important to be able to drive the process as a Minister, because we thought it would be a sprint, but it has turned out to be 1500 metres race. It doesn’t get much better than this and this is my goal medal right here,” Minister Griffith posited.

According to the Sports Minister, parliament has also approved an additional funding 50 million dollars for the National Sports Council and some of those monies, will be used to construct two new 400 metres tracks in Barbados.

He added: “What we are looking to do is to buttress what’s happening here at the National Stadium, so we are looking for two additional 400 metres tracks, one in the east and one in the north and we have asked the National Sports Council to start the process in the first quarter of the financial year.”

In this regard, Minister Griffith said government “is doing all that’s necessary to ensure our athletes are well prepared and the infrastructure is being put in place”.

China’s Economic and Commercial Counsellor Liang Jie said the National Stadium Project emphasizes the great relations between the two nations and stands as another great symbol, of their ties.

“After almost 2 years of hard work by the technical teams, with the design phase completed and the general contractor mobilized and already on site, I am fairly pleased that through this joint effort, we can witness the realization of a magnificent, high standard, high cost, totally new National Stadium,” Counsellor Li Ang added.

Phase one of the New National Stadium Project includes 10,000 seats and construction work is expected to take 26 to 29 months.

Phase two will also see an additional ten thousand seats added to bring the seating capacity at the New National Stadium to 20 thousand seats.

The National Stadium at Waterford was opened in October 1970, but in recent times has fallen into a state of disrepair.

The new stadium, which includes a new athletics track, will replace the old facility and move Barbados forward in this 21st century.