Dubai sports complex inaugurated in Haiti

A sports complex in Haiti has been inaugurated, four years after the country's devastating earthquake, the Dubai Duty Free Foundation has said.

The Dubai Duty Free Sports Complex at Lycee Jean-Baptiste Pointe du Sable in Saint-Marc was opened by the country’s president. Courtesy Dubai Duty Free
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DUBAI // Haiti's president has inaugurated the Dubai Duty Free Sports Complex, a Dh5.5 million project built with the help of donations raised after the country's catastrophic earthquake four years ago.

Haitian officials and representatives from the Hand in Hand for Haiti Foundation, which collected the donations, and the Dubai Duty Free Foundation attended the inauguration on Saturday.

The complex is at Lycee Jean-Baptiste Pointe du Sable school in Saint-Marc, which opened in 2011 and will serve more than 700 pupils, the foundation said. Dubai Duty Free donated Dh1.8 million towards the complex in 2012,

The sports complex includes a football pitch with artificial turf, basketball court, two volleyball courts and a 400-metre, six-lane running track. Other schools in the area will also be able to use the facility.

The opening of the complex is tremendous, completed in a short space of time and in a challenging environment, said Colm McLoughlin, Dubai Duty Free Foundation’s executive vice chairman.

The foundation is proud to have been part of the project, he said.

Dubai Duty Free has also supported other humanitarian projects, it said, including the Travel Retail Village in Palliyawatta, Sri Lanka, after the 2004 tsunami; the Smile Train project in the Philippines; and the Sightsavers projects in Odisha, India.

Saint-Marc is a port city in western Haiti. The 7.0-magnitude earthquake near Port au Prince in January 2010 is estimated to have killed at least 100,000 people, affected millions more, and damaged or destroyed 4,000 schools.

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