A day after the Commonwealth Games Federation president Mike Fennell effectively put the Suresh Kalmadi-led 2010 Organising Committee (OC) on notice, the international body’s chief executive Mike Hooper called for an “end to finger-pointing” over the hiring of foreign experts.

Sources in the OC say that they have so far contracted 33 foreign experts to manage the Games, 19 of them after the CGF Coordination Committee’s May report, in which they had been slammed for running behind schedule. It was this report that had prompted Fennell to write a letter to Kalmadi seeking a management overhaul to avoid a “partial failure” of the Games.

“It’s time to put differences behind us and work together. Tomorrow, some people from the Organising Committee might say things about the international experts. We may respond to that by producing facts about them,” Hooper said. “Disgraceful things are being said about Graeme Hudson (the shooting manager, who has been accused by the National Rifle Association of India of ‘working in a planned manner to destroy India’s medal hopes’). It’s just nonsense. This isn’t the time for pointing fingers, it’s time to start working to deliver a successful Games,” he added.

These experts are separate from the independent Technical Review Panel being set up to monitor preparations on a monthly basis.

Hooper acknowledged that the hiring process had picked up following Fennell’s letter, but said that more would be required. “You cannot make up a number. In the technology functional area, for example, we are way behind schedule. Things which needed to have been done two years back are being done now. Tenders came out in the newspapers last week. We are left to do all those tasks in practically eight months. For that, we need to find the right guys,” he said. Hooper said negotiations with some of the experts were still ongoing. “But we are losing out on many other experts because it’s already very late, and they have joined other projects.”

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