LAHORE: The cash-strapped Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) has sent an SOS message to its patron-in-chief, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, to bail out the federation financially since it has only a meagre amount of Rs600,000 left in the kitty.

The newly-elected PHF president Akhtar Rasool said on Thursday that a letter had been written to the prime minister for the release of grant on an urgent basis because the available funds were just not sufficient to meet the huge expenses of the federation.

Akhtar said Rs15 million had been spent to send the Pakistan junior team to take part in the Junior World Cup which is going to start in New Dehli, India from Dec 6.

He expressed hope that the Prime Minister would take immediate action to meet the demands of the PHF as he was a great lover of sports himself.

It may be mentioned here that for the last many years, the government has been the biggest sponsors for the PHF.

In the preceding five-year rule of outgoing president Qasim Zia, the federal and provincial governments released massive amount of funds to the PHF but since the national hockey team failed to bring many laurels home, no private companies or sponsors came forward to support the PHF.

The few achievements that the PHF could show in the last five years included the gold medal in the Asian Games 2010, a bronze medal in the Champions Trophy 2012, and a gold medal in the Asian Champions Trophy 2012-13.

Moreover, since no international event is being held in Pakistan for several years due to security concerns of the foreign teams, the PHF has found it hard to attract big local sponsors for hockey.—Sports Reporter