PESHAWAR: The federal government is devising a comprehensive national sports policy, which will be announced soon in order to resolve pending issues in a befitting manner and ensure promotion of sports in the country.

This was stated by Federal Minister for Inter-Provincial Coordination and Sports Dr Fehmida Mirza while talking to mediapersons at the Peshawar Sports Complex here on Sunday.

She held the Pakistan Olympic Association (POA) responsible for poor performance in the Tokyo Olympics and announced to promote sports at the grassroots by reviving sports activities at schools level in the country.

Fehmida holds POA responsible for poor show in Tokyo Olympics

The minister regretted that some personalities had occupied key seats or departments for past many years and were doing nothing, but the government was determined to take steps for improvement in the system. She said the successive governments had formed no sports policy at the national level since 2005 and that was why no efforts were made to promote new talent.

Fehmida Mirza said the sports policy would be announced after taking the provincial governments on board. She said the federal government would not allow anyone to use the official seats for their own interests.

She said steps had been taken in the light of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s vision to safeguard the talented youth from sports politics. “We are going to introduce equal opportunities for the youth irrespective of indulging into Punjabi, Sindhi or Pakhtun politics,” she said.

The minister said that trials were underway in all provinces to bring out new talent. She said the graph of Pakistan sports had gone down for many years, but the PTI government had sincerely taken the steps to bring it up.

“Before our government, there was no structure for sports governance in the country and we have worked on it to streamline things,” she claimed.

She said talent hunt had been started at the school and college level while a systematic policy for sports was being formulated at the national level. She said all the stakeholders had been taken into confidence so as to devise a better policy.

Appreciating the inaugural KP National Hockey League-2021, she said such games at the provincial level and involving senior hockey players would provide ample opportunities to the upcoming players to play side by side with them and learn.

Accompanied by additional secretary sports Tashfeen Haider, DG Sports Asfandyar Khattak and PSB DG retired Col Asif Zaman, the minister visited Hayatabad Sports Complex and other facilities, and also witnessed the ongoing rehabilitation work at the PSB Coaching Centre in Peshawar.

Published in Dawn, September 27th, 2021