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Unfinished, useless swimming pools cost more than a billion forints in public funds
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Weed grows in buildings where kids should be swimming since 2017 in mulitple rural settlements in Hungary. The government spent more than a billion forints on constructing swimming pools, which have not been finished. The contractor is a one-man company which had no prior references in the construction industry, or anywhere else.
In 2014 the Hungarian government decided to build training swimming pools for children across the country, where these are not yet available.
In the first round the state commenced 22 new buildings, but some of those are still not finished. Six of the 22 was supposed to be built by the same company, Hanley Service Kft. The one-man enterprise had no prior references in the construction sector or anywhere else, and was awarded HUF 1.7 billion in state subsidies for the construction of swimming pools and gyms in 18 days.
Three of the six swimming pools were completed on deadline, the other three were never finished. The swimming pool in the city of Balassagyarmat was finished but not opened for the public yet, while the swimming pools in town Enying and town Sásd have been left unfinished for quite some time.
So far the government has spent HUF 356 million on the Enying swimming pool and HUF 414 million on the Balassagyarmat facility. 384 million HUF was spent on the building in Sásd, all of them useless.
No one officially explained why the construction works have been suspended. Although the people who once worked here heard that the company has run out of money, Hanley Service Kft. does not appear to have any financial problems, according to public records filed.
State-run agency National Sports Centers said, the investments are delayed, but will be completed – but they did not specify a new deadline. They did not explain the reason of the years long delay either. The representative of Hanley Service did not answer our questions about the unfinished projects.
Written and translated by Eszter Katus
You can read the original, Hungarian language story here