The Nelson Mandela Bay municipality plans to form multi-sectoral task teams bringing together skills as diverse as emergency services and policing to ensure it successfully hosts games for the FIFA 2010 Soccer World Cup.

The municipality is forming seven task teams in the sectors of infrastructure, transport and logistics, marketing, tourism and accommodation, safety and security and spatial development to ensure safety, peace and efficiency during the games.

“In essence, we are going to need representation of all mentioned sectors to play their role in the preparation of the 2010 World Cup, even the taxi industry,” spokesperson, Roland Williams told BuaNews.

According to the host city, all these functional areas are currently carried out by a single technical task team.

“But now we want to have seven task teams and also include other stakeholders that were previously not represented in the technical team.”

The transport task team would for example, include the South African Police Service, roads agencies, emergency services and representatives of the taxi industry amongst others.

Mr Williams said if Executive Mayor Nondumiso Maphazi approved the task teams, all sectors needed for the hosting of a successful world cup would be involved.

He indicated that the preliminary construction of the city’s R1.1 billion stadium had already begun and was expected to be finished in December 2008.

Should construction of the 50 000 capacity stadium in Port Elizabeth be reached, the city would be the only likely coastal host of the 2009 Confederations Cup.

For now, confirmed venues are in Gauteng, Rustenburg and Bloemfontein.

The Municipality is optimistic that it will meet the deadline to complete construction as it had thus far been able to meet deadlines set by FIFA, the Local Organising Committee and the National Treasury, amongst others.

Mr Williams said in this regard, Mandela Bay had been the first host city to submit their business plans regarding various issues including tourism, safety and transport.