KARACHI: Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) Director General Col (retd) Mohammad Asif Zaman on Tuesday advised the federations to hire quality foreign coaches so that the performance graph could be raised.
“I tell the federations to hire good foreign coaches so that we could enhance our performance graph in various disciplines,” Asif told ‘The News’ in a detailed talk.
He informed that a handful of federations have approached the PSB for hiring foreign coaches to prepare their brigades for forthcoming major international events.
“We have hired foreign coaches for hockey, taekwondo and volleyball while swimming, shooting, karate, squash, weightlifting, judo and wrestling have also shown interest in the same. An Egyptian coach is being hired for squash and the rest of the cases are in progress,” said Asif, also a former squash player.
He said there would be no issue from the PSB’s side in hiring foreign coaches. “Under the process a foreign coach is kept on a three month probation period and if he is good and performs during this period then his/her services are taken for one year,” Asif said.
He added that efforts would be made to provide foreign coaches to the interested and deserving federations very soon so that good preparations could be made for international commitments.
Recently the PSB has hired the services of a Brazilian volleyball coach and according to a source in the Pakistan Volleyball Federation (PVF), he is expected to arrive soon as a visa letter has been sent to him.
Asif Zaman made it clear that the PSB will pay the salary of the foreign coaches while it will be the responsibility of the federations to provide them accommodation and other facilities.
“Yes we will pay coaches the actual salary while the rest of the facilities will be given by the federations as they also will have to do 'something',” Asif said.
He said that potential federations will soon be given their annual grants soon, adding special grants are also being given in case of need.
He said that the Board will back foreign training tours of federations whose players are expected to claim medals in the coming international events.
“We are also backing javelin thrower Arshad Nadeem’s training tour to South Africa,” the DG said.
He said that the Board also plans to increase the daily allowance of the players from Rs200 to Rs500, besides boosting the diet allowance.
“We need to do more in this area as players need money and proper diet during camps. Keeping in view the available resources we will try our level best to give more relief to the athletes during the training period,” Asif said.
About the football issue he said that there is some litigation associated with it and hoped its earliest resolution.
“I think there are some legal issues associated with the matter and once they are settled the matter will get resolved also,” Asif said.
FIFA-appointed Normalisation Committee is desperately waiting for the Punjab government to hand it over the PFF headquarters in Lahore which is the 'only' way to get the issue resolved.
