LAHORE: IPC secretary Ahmad Hanif Orakzai and Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) Director General Shoaib Khoso will visit sports universities in China during their Asian Games-related visit of the neighbouring country later this month.
Pakistan is going to establish its first ever sports university in Islamabad. The outgoing premier Shahbaz Sharif performed its soft launching in July. “We are going to establish a sports university in Islamabad as per the orders of the prime minister. We will visit sports varsities in China to get a clear idea about their structure,” PSB Director General Shoaib Khoso told The News in a detailed chat.
“We have written to our embassy there and hopefully it will facilitate us. You know China has some good sports universities in Beijing and Shanghai and we will visit them,” Shoaib said. The duo will leave for China on September 21. They will also attend the opening ceremony of the 19th Asian Games on September 23 in Hangzhou.
Asked if athletes preparing for the Asian Games are being given extra diet, Shoaib said that they don’t have funds. “We don’t have funds and therefore we cannot provide extra diet to our athletes,” he said.
“Whatever we are doing we are doing on credit as there is no state funding as yet. Only we know how we manage all these things,” Shoaib was quick to add. “The estimated expenditure on the entire contingent which also covers training camps was around 250 million rupees. Meeting the expenses of 200 people is not easy as you know everything is very expensive,” Shoaib said.
“We have already deposited with the Asian Games organisers 150,000 US dollars as boarding fee,” he said. He said that for the last three months the Board has been backing training camps and has not left any stone unturned in facilitating the athletes.
“We have been handling camps for the last three months. Our traveling arrangements have been completed. We have arranged some of the kits through our limited resources and we have sponsored some jerseys and tracksuits through a Karachi-based company,” Shoaib said. “This is the first time that the PSB has managed this,” he was quick to add.
“Onwards we have planned to also engage manufacturers of Sialkot. Obviously the state is short of money and we also don’t have enough funding for the Asian Games-bound contingent,” Shoaib said.
“We are directly and indirectly sponsoring around 200 people and of them the Board sponsors 151 and for the rest we have already funded federations. We knew that we would face financial issues this year so we had given the amount to the federations in the previous financial year,” Shoaib said.
Asked about the state’s stance regarding the proposed meeting with FIFA, Shoaib said that they want to attend this meeting online. “We want to attend this meeting online,” Shoaib said. “We have written to the IPC Ministry and it's taking up the matter with FIFA,” the DG said.
”Online meeting can be made possible. If you go to Dubai definitely you will have to spend and we don’t want to spend money and this is the only matter,” he said. “The IPC Minister and I as DG PSB will attend the meeting,” he disclosed.
Asked what will be their stance during the meeting with FIFA, Shoaib said that they had a clear stance. “Our earlier stance was to bind NC to hold the elections as soon as possible as per its mandate. Our current stance is the same. We want NC to hold the PFF elections quickly so that our players do not suffer more,” Shoaib said.
“They (NC) are unprofessional people and they don’t know much about the game. You see NC is the only body which faces issues in obtaining NOC from the state. No other federation has ever faced such an issue,” Shoaib said.
