LAHORE: The Punjab Sports Policy was approved by the provincial cabinet on Tuesday with key features of introducing Sports Endowment Fund and to introduce the health insurance scheme for the athletes.

The sports policy had been dispatched to the Punjab government for approval about a year back, without holding any dialogue with the stakeholders.

Like the past governments, the incumbent has also included cricket, ensuring the building of two high performance centres in Sialkot and Faisalabad. Previously when the Sports Board Punjab hired the services of former legendary batsman Zaheer Abbas to establish academies, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) expressed reservations, saying cricket can only run under its domain.

Before Zaheer’s appointment, cricket had never been the part of the Sports Board Punjab’s activities.

The policy also intends to establish a High Performance Centre for hockey in Lahore.

Sports minister Rai Tamoor Khan Bhatti claimed the new policy would promote the standard of the sports in the province. He said 1400 grounds had already been selected for building top class sports infrastructure in the province.

He informed that in the last budget 2021-22, the Punjab government had allocated the sports development budget to the tune of Rs 6.15billion.

Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2021