Minister postpones meeting with Games stakeholders at eleventh hour

ISLAMABAD: Stalemate on finalising arrangements’ detail of the 14th South Asian Games still persists as the meeting meant for settling down the important issues was postponed half an hour before its start due to the ‘pressing’ comments of Minister for Inter-Provincial Coordination (IPC) Dr Fehmida Mirza.

All the stakeholders were lined up for the 10am meeting on Monday morning when at around 9.30am all the participants of the meeting were told that the minister was not available due to her pressing commitments.

The meeting was meant to finalise the exact dates of the South Asian Games and related details on the event. Usually, preparations of any mega regional event start almost two years ahead of the event but here the basic requirements have yet to be met. These include an initial letter to all the concerned government departments to extend all possible support to the organisers as the success of such a big event is largely correlated with reputation of the country’s hosting abilities. Such Games usually showcase a country’s love and respect for honouring the international commitments and its resolve to uphold the Olympic Charter as is required under UN resolution. Prime Minister Imran Khan expressed his keen interest to organise the Games during an early January 2021 meeting with the stakeholders. Pakistan Olympic Association (POA) president Lt Gen (r) Arif Hasan briefed the prime minister on the salient features of the Games and successfully sought his permission to hold the 14th edition in populous cities of Punjab.

Since then, however, no concrete efforts or even meeting was arranged to decide on the basic requirements to kick start the preparations. These include establishment of Secretariat, formation of Steering and Organising Committees and more importantly a letter from the concerned to all government departments including provincial governments to take all possible steps to help out the concerned in hosting of the Games.

“The meeting that was scheduled for Monday was meant to finalise these issues. We have sent several letters to the Ministry for IPC regarding the importance of a meeting to complete the formalities. The POA president also took his time out from his pressing commitments in the USA to make himself available for the Monday meeting, but we were told half an hour before the start of the meeting that the Minister was not available and as such there will be no meeting. Here at the POA Offices in Lahore we made all the arrangements for the virtual meeting which we thought was very important to set the preparations rolling. We still feel we are already late in finalizing the basics on which we would go on to organize these Games,” a POA official said.

Later, the PSB issued a press release that said: “The meeting of president Pakistan Olympic Association with Federal Minister Dr. Fehmida Mirza has been postponed and will be rescheduled soon. As per press release issued by the PSB yesterday, a meeting between the POA and the federal minister was scheduled for Monday which could not materialized due to the heavy parliamentary business of the minister as the budget session was in full swing. Moreover, the President POA, Lt. Gen (R) Arif Hassan was also out of the country.”

“Pakistan Sports Board Director General Col (r) Muhammad Asif Zaman contacted the President and Secretary POA and discussed issues relating to finalize the forthcoming SAF Games and the next mutually convenient meeting.”