KARACHI, Nov 11: Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) on Friday announced organizing committee for December’s South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) championship without having any top PFF official.

The names were finalized by PFF after its president Faisal Saleh Hayat met Sindh Chief Minister Arbab Ghulam Rahim and Sindh Governor Ishratul Ibad and visited the venue — People’s Sports Complex to inspect the renovation done recently.

According to names announced by PFF, City Nazim Mustafa Kamal, Home Minister Rauf Siddiqui and Sindh Sports Minister Qamar Mansoor, will be patrons of the organizing committee. Director-General Rangers (Sindh) Maj-Gen Jawaid Zia has been named as the chairman.

Interestingly, the top two PFF officials — president Faisal Saleh and secretary Arshad Lodhi — were not named even as co-chairmen.

PFF director technical Lt-Col Mujahid Ullah Khan (retd) said the four officials would have supervisory role as the eight-nation event was being hosted with the cooperation of Sindh Government.

However, Mujahid parried the question when asked why the top two PFF officials were missing from the organizing committee, saying “it is the president who announced the organizing committee and he will be the overall in-charge.”

Nevertheless, when pressed for an answer, Mujahid said Faisal could not be in Karachi from the start of the championship since he was president, while secretary Arshad had no time for organizational matters.

“It is not possible for the president to be in Karachi all the time during the competition. As for the secretary, he has commitments as Punjab Agriculture Minister.

“In fact, he was asked and scheduled to visit Karachi to inspect the venue along with the president, but he failed to come because of his ministerial assignments,” said the official.

Asked since quartet were government officials, non-technical and not related to soccer, who would be available for comments and to interact with media in case of a controversy, Mujahid said “these four people will make sub-committees according to their needs.”

“PFF vice-presidents Abbas Baloch and Aga Liaquat will be local representatives and will be accommodated in the organizing committee,” the technical director said.

The committee has been announced by PFF following war of words between PFF and Sindh sports minister who was twice snubbed by the federation for announcing that Karachi would host the event and then for naming an organizing committee, saying Sindh was a major “stakeholder” and that he would not take dictation from PFF.

SAFF and AFC would provide $500,000 to PFF for the forthcoming event of which $170,000 would be spent on organizational matters, while the remaining $330,000 would be for other expenses.

Apart from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Maldives, Bhutan and Afghanistan will participate in the championship which runs from Dec 7 to 17.