PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on Tuesday allocated Rs700 million for the promotion of the women’s sports in the province.

Director (female games) Rashida Ghaznavi told reporters here that the funds were solely for promoting the women’s sports in the province.

“It has been a longstanding demand of the women to have exclusive facilities across the province for sporting activities in a conducive environment,” she said.

The director said the last government had held record sporting activities in the province for both men and women, while more than 35,000 youths were involved in Under-23 Games, fi rst at the district level and then at regional level.

She said women took part in boxing, swimming, rowing, skiing, baseball, archery and martial arts.

“Such sports were earlier dominated by men as they’d never been considered to be women’s.

However, things have changed as the women of KP are securing top positions in sports competitions,” she said.

Ms Rashida said the government was extending all sporting facilities to women to help them participate in healthy activities.

She said the women’s sports in the U-23 Games had been covered by the media even in Dera Ismail Khan, Chitral, Bannu, Tank and Lakki Marwat.

The director said the government was committed to promoting the women’s sports across the province and therefore, it wanted to spend Rs700 million for establishing multipurpose omen’s sports facilities at all divisions.

She said modern gyms would be established for women across the province for which the directorate of sports would hire professional women coaches and managers.

“The directorate of sports is fully cognisant of the need for the provision of amicable playing environment for women players,” she said.

Ms Rashida said the more than 8,000 sportswomen participated in the games, while the medal winners were awarded academic scholarship to help them focus on education along with sports.

She said a talent hunt project would be executed by the end of November to identify talented women players in squash, badminton, table tennis, tennis and volleyball.

“These sportswomen will be provided with the best coaching in Peshawar,” she said adding that the All Pakistan Women Sports Championship will be held next year to provide an opportunity to the winners to show their talents.

Published in Dawn, October 31st, 2018