CWG misses yet another deadline: Ticket sales
On First Day, Buyers Return Empty-Handed
Rumu Banerjee | TNN
New Delhi: Last Friday, the Organizing Committee of the Commonwealth
Games had announced with great fanfare that overthe-counter ticket
sales to the public would begin on August 25. And so, Pushpender
Sharma, a student and an athlete, reached OC headquarters at 9am sharp
to buy a ticket. Nine hours later, he still hadn't got one.
''Officials at the OC headquarters sent me to the Central Bank,
Parliament Street branch. The tickets were not available there either.
They told me to come back at 3pm, then I was told to return at six.
This is no way to treat people who wish to be a part of the CWG,''
fumed Sharma. He wasn't the only one complaining.
Officials at various outlets of Central Bank of India and Hero
Honda — the OC's official ticketing partners — admitted that many
customers turned up in the morning, but had to go back disappointed.
Said B S Harilal, assistant general manager at Central Bank of India
(Parliament Street), ''We kept sending people back through the day.
More than 100 people turned up at our branch. We had to inform them
that tickets were not available and they would have to return at 3pm.
Finally, at 7 pm, we were able to sell tickets.''
The scene was repeated across almost all the outlets designated by
the OC for ticket sale. TOI, which visited around 10 sites, saw empty
counters and disgruntled customers at every site. OC cites tech snag
for mess
New Delhi: The much-publicised sale of tickets for the Commonwealth
Games was bit of a dampener with most of the designated counters
turning away buyers as they were yet to receive the tickets. In fact,
the Central Bank outlet in the organising committee headquarters was
summarily sending every customer to the Parliament Street branch
without any explanation. B S Harilal, assistant general manager at
Central Bank of India (Parliament Street) said they kept sending
people back through the day. More than 100 people turned up at our
branch, he said.
Yet again, it was the organising committee — the gang that can't
shoot straight — to blame. It was still synchronising the online
ticket purchases that had been made till date with the stock of
tickets available.
Said a senior organising committee official, ''Since the opening
and closing ceremony tickets are numbered seats, synchronisation of
tickets that have already been purchased with the available stock is
necessary. Besides, a lot of other back-end programming had to be
performed, which is why tickets were not available till 6 pm.''
So why was the organising committee still performing 'backend
programming' on the day the sale of tickets was to begin? No one in
the organising committee had a clue. Secretary general Lalit Bhanot
brushed off the matter, saying the system was under maintenance and
that tickets were ''now available''.
''The tickets were made available as soon as the system was
updated. There's no problem,'' insisted Bhanot. Sanjeev Mittal, head
of the ticketing function, added that ticket stocks had been sent to
outlets already.
Ironically, the sale of tickets till date is not exactly in
numbers that should have taken any decent system much time to update.
Of the 17 lakh tickets that organising committee hopes to sell for
the upcoming sporting event, a little above 1 lakh have been sold till
date. Sources admitted that the ceremonies — for which 50,000 tickets
are each available — have actually managed to sell around 12,000
tickets: in total.
Ticket sales of the sporting events is even more dismal. The only
sport that has managed to get spectators is hockey, for which a mere
8,000 tickets have been sold. The rest haven't even managed to
generate more than 5,000 ticket sales each, added sources.
(with inputs from Neha Jain
and Rachit Anand)
NO LUCK: Hundreds of buyers were told to try later at various outlets
on Wednesday
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