KARACHI: PIA, once the strongest side in domestic hockey, are not participating in CNS hockey tournament in Lahore because of the financial crisis the airline is in.
The management of the airline wants to curtail its expenditures by stopping its sports activities. It is pertinent to mention here that PIA have been national champions no less than 28 times.
Officials in PIA’s sports department said the high-ups of the national airline have no interest in sports activities. They said that the PIA high-ups simply said that they were facing a financial crisis and they cannot provide funds to run sports teams.
PIA, who made their debut in the national hockey championship in 1965, have also been the runners-up 10 times. At the end of 2016, PIA were at the top, having won the national championship for three consecutive years.
“This year the PIA administration did not allow the sports department to hire any player, not even on contract basis,” a source said. The source further said that PIA had players who had permanent jobs but they were too old to play now.
There has been no induction of young players in any discipline, be it cricket, football or squash due to which the performance of the teams has gone down rapidly, the PIA sports officials said.
A number of promising young hockey players, who had been playing on contractual and stipend basis, left the national carrier during the last couple of years. These players had been offered lucrative salaries and jobs by other departments, sources mentioned.
They said that there was no fault of PIA’s hockey team as it had been winning the national championship. A player said the financial losses in PIA have not happened because of sports department. The sports teams, especially of hockey, always shined in national-level events, he added.