Temporary ice rink causes controversy in warm Nicaragua

Nov 26, 2009, 18:24 GMT

   Managua - Nicaragua's leftist government caused controversy with the construction of a temporary ice rink that cost close to 1.5 million dollars and was only set to be in use during December.

The tropical Nicaragua - with average temperatures of 31-34 degrees throughout the year - is the second-poorest country in the Americas, after Haiti.

Local media have strongly criticized the project in Managua as 'an excentricity,' in a country of 6 million where 70 per cent of the people live on at most 1 dollar per day and where 60 per cent would like to go abroad to work, according to independent research.

First Lady Rosario Murillo - also the spokeswoman for the government of Sandinista President Daniel Ortega - said the 225- square-metre ice rink built near the city's waterfront Malecon on Lake Managua is set to 'give joy' to poor children.

Murillo - accompanied by several of her children and grandchildren - walked around the facility, known as the Park of Happy Girls and Boys, which was set to stand for just one month.

'We have the responsibility to bring here many children from across the country,' she said at the first ice rink ever built in Nicaragua.

City government officials said they hope to host 8,000 visitors per day at the park. Use of the ice rink - which can hold 60 skaters at any one time - is set to be free.

'We are going to have circuses, music shows, clowns, jugglers, all free, because that is what children deserve,' Murillo said.

Nicaraguan authorities did not reveal the upkeep costs of the ice rink, or the origin of the funds that were devoted to its construction.