LAHORE, July 28: Olympian Saleem Nazim has urged the Prime Minister, also the Patron-in-Chief of the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF), to impose ad hoc on the federation and dissolve its officials. In a statement on Thursday, Saleem, who was suspended as secretary Punjab Hockey Association (PHA) said after the Senate Sports Standing Committee’s debate on poor performance of the federation, the patron should impose ad hoc.

The Senate committee has been grilling the PHF officials since January for the poor performance of teams in international competitions and being allegedly involved in human smuggling. Pakistan has failed to win any major title during the past five years under the tenure of Gen Aziz Khan (former president) and current secretary Brig Musarratullah Khan (retd).

Saleem said the Senate committee should end its proceedings by giving its final report as soon as possible. He said the PHF considered Olympians, former captains and internationals as rivals as they were criticizing its performance.

He claimed that the PHF was sending notices to the department of those Olympians who were criticizing the performance of the federation. The Olympian said finally master coach Tahir Zaman had decided to quit after his team faced defeats in 20 tournaments in five years. Tahir was the coach of the junior team which finished seventh in World Cup in The Netherlands recently.

He also held coach of the junior team Asif Bajwa responsible along with Tahir for poor performance of the team in the World Cup. Asif had trained the junior team for two years, before elevation as coach of the senior team.

Reacting over Olympian Naveed Alam’s statement in which he defended PHF, saying Asian Hockey Federation (AHF) was an ineffective body as it didn’t inform about the new rules to the PHF, Saleem reminded that Musarrat was the senior vice-president of the AHF and chairman of umpiring committee.

He said that surprisingly chairman selection committee Akhtar Rasool had selected same failed junior players in the senior team for back-to-back tournaments to be held in Germany and the Netherlands.