panaji for a long time the swimming fraternity in goa has been deprived of basic facilities where they could train and prepare for national championships even those who swim for leisure were left without any place for their regular activitythe staterun swimming pool at campal and then peddem sports complex took agonisingly long to be refurbished but there was no such luck with the pool at fatorda lying in ruins since being closed due to the covid19 pandemicnow there are reasons to be optimisticthe sports authority of goa sag has started work at the swimming pool in fatorda the pipelines wherever needed will be replaced new tiles filtration tanks and plants will also be installedwe want the best work to be done by the end of january said deepak lotlikar executive engineer at sag the files are cleared work has started we are making the pool as good as the one at campal the pool was getting outdated with work such as new tanks sand pipelines fitting of tiles there will be no complaints in the futurethe swimming pool at fatorda became operational in 1997 without much maintenance work the pool was crying for repairs the operating systems were outdated pipeline corroded and the less said the better about the structurei was running from pillar to post but nothing moved for a long time said goa swimming association secretary sudesh nagvekar sag officials didnt answer my phone calls knowing i would ask them ugly questions about the fatorda pool we were always told that tenders have been floated files sent for approval and forwarded to the concerned departments the answers were bureaucratic the work has now started so lets wait and watchaccording to nagvekar margao has not produced any swimmer in the last 10 years due to regular coaching classes popularly known as rcc being stopped a few years agothe water quality was bad as a result of which the swimmers were getting rashes the pool was in a dilapidated state the filtration process was not at optimum level who will send their kids to swim in such a pool the rcc scheme had to be stopped and it killed the interest of people in margao and nearby areas said nagvekareven with all those obstacles a few enthusiasts and a group of senior citizens continued swimming till the covid19 pandemic put a stop to all sporting activitiesi had to go all the way to ponda for swimming after the fatorda pool was closed we had a group of 30 senior citizens who swam here regularly said 58yearold angelo barreto from curtorimfor more than two and half years the pool was closed to publicaccording to lotlikar the facility will now be thrown open by january end or the first week of februarywe dont want to do a patch up job once it is done it should continue for a long time i am personally monitoring the process the structure will get a facelift too said lotlikar