Calls for rewarding coaches of medal-winning athletes

KARACHI: Coaches are cardinal part of a team as they work hard on athletes to enable them to win medals in international circuit. Whereas other nations look after their coaches as well as their athletes, in Pakistan coaches are not even given cash awards for enabling their athletes to win medals in international circuit.

These days 13th South Asian Games medallists are receiving their cash prizes in phases from the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) but coaches are being ignored. A source in the PSB said that due to various reasons incentives for coaches are not part of the programme. However, the new PSB ExCo will work on it, the source was quick to add.

“Yes, coaches deserve incentives when their athletes win medals in international circuit,” the source said.

In the 2016 India South Asian Games, coaches were given ten percent of the cash prizes of their teams total prize money. It was a rare occurrence. But they have been deprived this time.

“Coaches should be given incentives,” Pakistan’s boxing coach Arshad Hussain told ‘The News’.

“You know we leave our home, work for months with the players and eventually when our players get medals they are given cash prizes but we are ignored,” said Arshad, an Olympian.

“The state should include coaches in its cash awards policy. It is because of coaches that athletes secure medals. Both athletes and coaches form a team and coaches should also be treated fairly and should get incentives also,” he said.

“If we are not given incentives in future we will not do coaching,” Arshad said.

Meanwhile, the country’s premier wrestler Mohammad Inam said that coaches deserve to be honoured.

“Previously too we raised this issue and again I say that coaches should have got cash awards along with the athletes who won medals in the 13th South Asian Games in Nepal,” Inam told ‘The News’.

“A coach is highly responsible figure of a team. He looks after the whole team, focusses on every player, makes a plan. So I think coaches need to be given cash awards when Pakistan teams win medals in any major event,” said Inam, two-time World Beach Wrestling Championship gold medallist and title holder of the World Beach Games.

“If coaches incentives are not in policy, it should be incorporated now so that in future they could get cash awards,” Inam said.

Pakistan Weightlifting Federation (PWF) Secretary Amjad Amin Butt also supported the idea, saying they deserve incentives. “Coaches should also be given cash awards. If they are ignored how will they be motivated? Everybody has needs and coaches should not be ignored when their athletes get medals,” Butt told ‘The News’.

Pakistan Volleyball Federation (PVF) Secretary Shah Naeem Zafar also stressed the need to give cash incentives to coaches. “They should also be given cash awards. They deserve fair treatment as they work hard and stay away from their homes for months. It’s their right,” Shah said.

In Pakistan, the coaches get merely Rs15,000 to Rs25,000 monthly salary. In India head coach of a team is given Rs300,000. In the Khelo India programme even the grassroots level coaches are given 20 percent of the total prize money of a team and 30 percent is handed to the developmental coaches. “And this is the main reason India has progressed so well in sports,” Shah said.