By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
THE Serbian Sports Centre has recouped a small part of a $150,000 federal grant that was taken away from it by the government in 2013.
The Bangholme-based centre, with the help of Isaacs MP Mark Dreyfus, has recently secured a $18,000 Stronger Communities grant to replace its basketball hall’s painted concrete surface with floorboards.
Unfortunately, it won’t fix several of the centre’s other necessary works such as the court’s leaking tin roof and leaking LPG cylinder.
Rain drips from the ceiling to create a slippery floor and causes basketball games to be cancelled out of fears for players’ safety.
The hazards were to be fixed by the $150,000 grant, which included connecting the centre to a natural-gas street main.
Mr Dreyfus said the community would remember how the newly-elected Federal Government “ripped away” the grant.
“While this (new) funding only provides a small part of the lost $150,000, I was very happy to provide this support to the Serbian Sports Centre.”
The $150,000 grant, under the Building Multicultural Communities Program, was confirmed in a letter-of-offer by then Multicultural Affairs Minister Kate Lundy in August 2013
But then came the September 2013 federal election.
The government was replaced, the multicultural affairs ministry disappeared, the program slashed and the grant offer withdrawn by the Department of Social Services in December that year.
The sports centre, which had all but spent the funding, was unable to afford the works itself and made largely fruitless public pleas for the grant’s restoration.
According to its president Bob Stojanac, the community hub hosts about 1000 visitors and members of all ages and 20 nationalities, hosting free Friday night music for elderly people as well as sport.
He was unavailable for comment on the partially restored grant.
