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POA discusses Commonwealth Games plans with federations, PSB

By our correspondents
January 11, 2018

KARACHI: Pakistan Olympic Association (POA) on Wednesday held a meeting with some federations and Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) at Lahore and discussed various issues regarding the country's participation in the Commonwealth Games, slated to be held in Gold Coast, Australia, from April 4-15.

The POA chief Lt Gen (retd) Arif Hasan chaired the meeting. The PSB Director General Dr Akhtar Nawaz Ganjera was also present on the occasion.The meeting, held at the POA's headquarters, discussed submission of online accreditation of athletes and officials, training camps, submission of final entries by name, visa status of the participating athletes and officials and arrival and departure information of the contingent.

Pakistan is featuring in ten disciplines in the affair: hockey, athletics, badminton, boxing, shooting, squash, swimming, table tennis, weightlifting and wrestling."The purpose of the meeting was to create coordination among POA, federations and PSB regarding the Games," POA secretary Khalid Mehmood told ‘The News’ after the meeting.

He said the PSB DG promised full cooperation for providing maximum facilities to the athletes. As many as 89 athletes and officials will represent Pakistan in the quadrennial affair. A source said that a representative of Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) told the POA in the meeting that as its team management had been changed, there was a need for re-adjustment.

As online accreditation process completed on November 24, the POA told PHF that it should furnish the fresh data of the team management by tomorrow so that it could send a special request to the organisers.

Khalid told 'The News' that the event is going to be hosted by Australia which has strict rules. He added that the POA would file a request and it would then depend on the response of the organisers.

Ganjera told ‘The News’ while on his way to Islamabad after the meeting that the Board would ensure maximum participation of the national athletes in the Commonwealth Games."We don't intend to reduce the strength of the touring party," Genjera said.

He said camps of some of the federations had already been started and that some were going to launch preparations after their respective national championships.Genjera, who retires at the end of next month, said that the Board was going to send national wrestlers to Iran for one-month training ahead of the Commonwealth Games.

To a query, he said that he had already told federations to launch their preparations for the Asian Games to be hosted by Indonesia in Palembang and Jakarta coming summer. He also said that some federations had launched preparations for the 2020 Olympics to be held in Japan.