LAHORE, May 30: The Punjab Olympic Association (POA) has urged the provincial government to form a sports ministry and build up and improve the present sports infrastructure to prevent the deteriorating standard of sports in the province.

The POA secretary, Idrees Haider Khawaja, said Tuesday that since there was no sports ministry in the province, the Punjab Sports Board (PSB) was also functioning under the administrative control of the provincial education department.

Khawaja pointed out that the sports sector should be made an independent entity to be controlled by the ministry of sports.

The secretary went on to explain that Punjab does not have the required number of sports infrastructure facilities. The majority of the provincial sports associations were based at Lahore but the city lacked facilities as compared to other provincial headquarters like Peshawar, Karachi and Quetta. He said that there was no international standard swimming pool, tennis court and indoor hall in the city.

Expressing concern over the delay of opening of letter of credit to import a tartan track for athletics, he said that the track had already been approved for the Punjab Stadium which is being constructed in front of the National Hockey Stadium.

The Punjab government has already released the funds for the tartan track and at least three months were required to import a tartan track after opening of the letter of credit.

The Punjab Stadium was to be completed last year but its completion dates changed time and again.