-File photo

ISLAMABAD: Sports in the country are facing bad days in general but the Pakistan Sports Complex is beset with a peculiar problem.

Its international class swimming pool building has been occupied by the ministry of inter-provincial coordination (IPC) after the Ministry of Sports moved out after its devolution under the 18th Amendment.

“Who would take it as a positive development? Certainly not the sportsmen who have been robbed of their space,” a federal official told who cannot be identified because of a ban imposed recently by the government on its servants against speaking to the media told Dawn.

It was in 2008 that the sports ministry moved into the swimming pool building from the Green Trust Tower in the Blue Area because of high rent there.

“But the building was purpose built for international and national swimming events. In the wake of 9/11 no international even has been held and the changing rooms built for the swimmers now serve as offices,” the official said. Last month, the IPC ministry moved in. After the devolution of the sports ministry, affairs of the national sports federations, sports boards and the cricket board came under the control of the IPC ministry.

Their offices were scattered all over the big Jinnah Stadium of the Sports Complex - also a misuse of the sports facility. Now all have been brought under the same roof of the swimming pool building.

What worries the managers of the building and the sports board is that the IPC has more divisions under it than the defunct sports ministry ever had.

“Until now sports related offices had moved into the swimming pool building. Today, IPC's environment and development division arrived there,” said the alarmed official. “Who knows when its health, council of common interest and other divisions arrive.” But the federal secretary of IPC ministry Arif Azeem saw nothing wrong with the move.

“Previously, it (the sports complex) housed the office of the sports ministry. I don't see any reason why our other offices cannot be shifted there.

“Do you want to see the building just decay?” he asked when approached for comments.

For the principal accounting officer of the IPC ministry the cabinet division building was too crowded to accommodate the 34 different wings that his ministry controls.

“I have informed the federal government that we need more office space,” he said. “The federal government has to work somewhere.”