December 29, 2002	Sunday	Shawwal 24, 1423

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LAHORE, Dec 28: India has confirmed it will send a delegation to attend the ninth SAF Games Organising Committee meeting scheduled to be held at Islamabad on Jan 9.

Pakistan Olympic Association (POA) secretary Muhammad Latif Butt, after attending the general council meeting of the association on Saturday said that besides India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan had also confirmed their participation in the meeting.

However, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, a newly included country in the SAF region, were yet to confirm their participation. An invitation had been extended to both the countries. Afghanistan’s participation would be confirmed by Monday while Bangladesh would confirm it in a due course of time, he said.

 The twice postponed SAF Games, due to political and security problems are now rescheduled from March 29 to April 7, 2003 in Islamabad.

Latif said that POA had not received any request neither from India nor from Afghanistan, to make security arrangements for their contingents during the stay in Islamabad for the Games. However, he said that POA did not have any information if a similar kind of request had been received by the organising committee of the Games.

POA secretary said that general council had adopted a resolution asking Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) to weed out the condition it had imposed on the athletes to provide the surety bond worth Rs one million before touring abroad with any national team. The condition was laid down by the government to check the desertion by athletes sent abroad.

Latif claimed that the condition could not prove helpful to check this trend but it had increased the problems for the genuine athletes belonging to middle and poor class families and the sports officials.

“If a father has a property of Rs one million he will decide for his athlete son to do his own business and will not allow him to get an ordinary job on sports basis in BPS-5 and then to only struggle for getting a surety bond when included for international event”, POA secretary said.

Latif also criticised the government for not constructing sports infrastructure in the country which was the first duty of the government. He said that there was hardly any gymnasium, swimming pool working under the control of any national sports federation. He said that more than 30 national sports federation had a meagre share of Rs one crore from the total budget of the PSB which amounts to Rs 60 million. The remaining Rs five million were being spent on the salaries of the PSB staff, he said.

The secretary said that to press the government for building more infrastructure the POA had already adopted measure asking the Provincial Olympic Association for more sports related facilities before allotting them the National Games.

He said that the general council had given Balochistan another two months to ensure a tartan track and swimming pool in Quetta before getting the next national gala. In the past, the POA had allotted the games to Punjab after the government had released Rs 110 million for the Punjab Stadium.

He said that the meeting showed its satisfaction over the performance of the Pakistan contingents in the last Commonwealth and the Asian Games and urged the government to enhance the number of contingent.

The general council had stressed that at least one or two athletes of all the games should be included in the contingent and alleged that PSB had taken a wrong decision of including only those games in the contingent which had won medals in the past.

“Hockey returned empty handed from the 14th Asian Games and I ask the government will it not include this game for the next Asiad”, Latif questioned.

He said that general council had suspended the affiliation of the University Grant Commission (UGC) upon promulgation of ordinance No.LIII of making UGC a “defunct organisation”.

 The Higher Education Commission would submit a new application seeking affiliation of the POA. That would go through to the process laid down in the POA constitution to again get affiliation.