Hockey team, PHF officials invited by President’s House

KARACHI: For the first time in many months the federal government has shown interest in the affairs of national hockey as President Mamnoon Hussain has invited national team members, its management and PHF officials, ‘The News’ learnt on Monday.
Sources said they had been invited to a walk against corruption in the capital on Tuesday.
The PHF had been trying to have a meeting with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif but that meeting has been postponed several times.
Sources said that president PHF Akhtar Rasool and secretary Rana Mujahid had been in Islamabad since Sunday, and waiting to meet the President.
The President has no constitutional role in the PHF affairs, as the PM is the patron in chief of PHF.
But sources said it looked that finally the authorities were paying attention to the affairs of PHF, as the meeting with the PM, has been fixed for March 20.
PHF’s opponents have been trying to topple the incumbent management and PHF officials are striving to strengthen their position, but for that they would have to get money from the government.
Sources said the PM had been avoiding the meeting with the PHF officials because the government had been unwilling to release the big amount that the PHF demanded.
The PHF opponents believed that it was their struggle due to which the federal government realised that the PHF officials had not done any good since taking charge.
Meanwhile, a group of annoyed Olympians and grassroots level hockey organisers and coaches have decided to contact former PM Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali to resolve the longstanding issues of national hockey.
Jamali, a former PM, has great affection with the national game and he has been associated with the game for a long period.
Jamali played first class hockey in his younger days and later worked in the PHF as chairman national selection committee and in 2007-8 he was the president of PHF.
The sources said that the former PM knew all positive and negative aspects of the national hockey, including the factors that forced the government not to release the money to the PHF.