LAHORE: Meting out a step-motherly attitude to employees of all regional associations, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has only raised the salaries of its own staff, Dawn has learnt from reliable sources.

Staff members of the PCB received the increase variably —under three different categories — from July this year but surprisingly regional employees who are also on its payroll were ignored.

The unusual situation has left the regional employees dejected.

According to sources, while the PCB sent September salaries to the regional employees without any increase, the Board’s own staff received their regular pay plus arrears of three months.

Interestingly, the PCB has planned to hand over its regions to sponsors, a move that would have resulted in all the staff getting off-loaded.

However, the PCB failed to attract potential bidders interested in sponsoring any of the regions in the first attempt of the bidding process started in August this year. Therefore, employees of the regions remain the responsibility of the PCB.

It is difficult to predict when the sponsors will come forward to own the regions. Until that materialises, unfortunately, the fate of the regional employees will be hanging in the balance.

The PCB in order to reduce its domestic expenditures had sought to get sponsorship for every region but so far not even one sponsor has come forward to meet even the minimum bid price.

After this failure, the PCB marketing department is now fully focused on hosting the inaugural Pakistan Super League (PSL) in February next year. The Board for the same has changed the venue twice, finally settling on the UAE late last month.

As PCB’s marketing department faces the huge challenge of staging the PSL successfully, the Board’s programme to arrange sponsors for the regional bodies may well receive lesser priority, at least for now.

Published in Dawn, October 8th , 2015

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