THE post office role of the Sindh Olympic Association (SOA), which does not lag behind in allegedly creating parallel sports bodies in the province, needs to be curtailed forthwith to improve Sindh’s sports graph which has nosedived for well over a decade.

Presently, there are 10 parallel sports bodies in Sindh, the highest number in the four provinces, out of 42 affiliated units of the SOA. The parallel bodies exist in athletics, judo, cycling, squash, arm wrestling, sepaktakraw, hockey, tug of war, kick boxing and body building.

Some associations are run by individuals and a couple of them have failed to organise their activities since long.

This was the crux of a meeting chaired by the caretaker Sindh Sports Minister Dr Junaid Ali Shah in his office recently and attended by SOA officials, secretaries of various provincial sports associations besides squash legend Jahangir Khan.

After taking charge, the minister had said it was his desire to set some precedent in a short time. In the meeting, the minister hinted that he want to get rid of the parallelism and asked officials of the rival bodies to sink their differences and unite for the sake of sports.

The POA President retired Lt Gen Syed Arif Hasan may not be aware how his man, SOA secretary Ahmed Ali Rajput, has been operating and facing alleged charges of corruption besides being dubbed as the mastermind of creating parallel bodies and getting accused of harassment.

A lady official in the meeting clearly pointed fingers at Ahmed Ali for playing dirty politics and involved in immoral activities and the SOA official had nothing to say in his defense. A few people tried to defend him (Ali) but were hushed up by the caretaker minister.

It is a known fact that any association which doesn’t work according to the lines of the SOA secretary is either sidelined or replaced by another. The biggest joke is that SOA doesn’t recognise squash legend Jahangir Khan’s Sindh Squash Association (SSA). However, the SOA was flattened when Sindh sports secretary allowed JK’s body to compete in the Sindh Games recently.

Following the lines of their masters, the SOA often creates a new body overnight to tighten its grip on the Electoral College.

Under the prevailing system, only those provincial sports associations are allowed to compete in the National Games, Inter-provincial or Sindh Games which are affiliated with the SOA. This system had destroyed sports and needs to be abolished.

It is surprising that National Federations which come under the umbrella of the POA and affiliated with the respective International Federations have no say in the matter. Instead of supporting national federations, the POA backs provincial Olympic bodies and is solely responsible for the damage. Whenever any issue is raised, it takes shelter under the IOC charter.

It is time that national federation stand up in unison against the POA to revoke the existing law and allow their affiliated units to compete at national and provincial level.

As far as Sindh is concerned, it should set its own rules through legislation i.e. fixation of 30 years as maximum age of player for participation and 60 years as maximum age for holding office in provincial sports bodies.

The divisional commissioners should have a say in monitoring elections and activities of divisional sports bodies and, likewise, the Sindh sports secretary be empowered to conduct elections and supervise activities of provincial bodies.

If implemented, this will ensure transparency and bring new faces to the fore besides improving Sindh’s sports graph. People are virtually fed-up with the old faces who have remained glued to their seats for over three decades and now want a change.

It is pertinent to mention that this is not the first time that Sindh finished a poor third in the fourth Inter-provincial Games at Peshawar earlier this year. Sindh could only earn 73 medals – 17-16-40 in comparison to Punjab’s 139 – 65-44-30 and host Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s 120 –37-46-37.

Published in Dawn, June 30th, 2018