KARACHI, July 21: The Defence Housing Authority has planned to construct a sports complex in phase VIII adjacent to the Defence Authority O & A Level Model School in order to provide world standard sports facilities to students of the school.

Spread over 10 acres, the complex will provide all kinds of indoor sports facilities. The complex will also have international standard 400-metre-long athletic track of six lanes and football and hockey grounds.

Moreover, the sports complex will provide swimming facility to the students at the Olympic standard 25-metre-long swimming pool with six lanes. Another swimming pool has also been planed for children and both will also have deck and filter plant to keep the water bacteria free.

The administrator of Defence Housing Authority, Brig Asif Ghazali told Dawn that the authority had taken the task of constructing a sports complex at a huge cost with the aim of providing world class sports facilities to children.

The selection of the site for such a fabulous complex, he said, had been taken after giving serious thought to the fact that the young generation deserved something more

than simple education opportunities.

Brig Ghazali said though physical fitness was essential for every child, and especially to the students studying under the Cambridge system (O & A Level), as the load on these students was particularly heavy.

“Unfortunately the Cambridge system of education has become a fashion in Pakistan. In the rat race, our society is adopting it fast but in the process they are neglecting the health of a child due to lack of sports facilities,” he said.

He said that many schools in the country used to display words like O & A levels for promotional purposes.

However, he added, “Such schools forget that this system also need physical facilities to supplement and balance the educational pressure on students.”

He said that most of these schools were operating in residential buildings.

At the complex, he said that the most worth mentioning portions for indoor games were three tennis courts (spread over 21,600 square feet); three basket ball courts (spread over 12,600 square feet); two volley ball courts of Olympic standard (covering around 3,600 square feet area) and three squash courts (covering 7,718 square feet area).

The sports complex would have separate practice field for hockey as well as separate practice pitches, he informed while adding that facilities like sauna, steam changing, lockers and toilets, car parking, students’ hostel and faculty residential area will also be made available at the complex.