December 25, 2002	Wednesday	Shawwal 20, 1423

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FAISALABAD, Dec 24: Faisalabad Hockey Stadium at Madina Town was inaugurated after years of delay on Tuesday.

The project was approved in 1985 and development work started in 1987 with an estimated cost of Rs25million but was stopped after a year due to negligence of the then officials of the Faisalabad Development Authority (FDA) and other reasons.

The project was restarted in 1995 with an estimated cost of Rs 51.5 million but the budget was enhanced upto Rs 85 million in 1996 due to escalating prices of building material and increase in prices of other equipments.

FDA spent Rs 125 million for the construction of stadium till now despite the fact that only Rs 25 million were allocated in 1985 when the project was approved. Therefore, Rs100 million were drained due to negligence of the concerned officials and lack of interest by various agencies.

Interestingly, a grade-19 officer of the FDA will be the administrator of stadium while hockey stadiums of Gujranwala, Rawalpindi, Multan, Lahore and Sargodha are being looked after by the hockey associations or the sports committees.

The reason FDA does not want to hand over the stadium to the hockey association is the dozens of shops and offices which are part of the stadium from which FDA plans to raise its revenues through rents.