12-Jan-2012
THE NEWS
Syed Intikhab Ali
KARACHI: Pakistan Swimming Federation (PSF) is finally going to have its own pool in Lahore very soon thanks to support from the Punjab government, but in Sindh it remains without such a facility and has to depend on other institutions for practice and competitions.
Unfortunately there is no use of Kashmir Road’s swimming pool owned by the KMC and Pakistan Women Sports Complex (PWSC) swimming pool owing to unsporting attitude of the officials concerned.
Informed sources told ‘The News’ that PSF made a lot of efforts to develop a swimming pool in Karachi with a proper gymnasium for training and competitions. They have also managed sponsorship for building the swimming pool, hostel and gym, but their efforts to acquire a piece of land have failed.
There has been no help from the federal government, the provincial government or KMC in this regard. Whenever federal and provincial governments identified plots for the purpose, it was impossible to get it vacated by grabbers, sources said.
Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) and KMC are in a position to help and get the issue resolved forever, but their cold shoulder attitude with PSF has caused the issue to linger, the secretary PSF Major (Retd) Majid Waseem said.
The top officials of PSF had approached PSB to develop the swimming pools at the vast empty land inside the jurisdiction of National Sports Training and Coaching Center (NSTCC) that it owns, but PSB paid no attention to this proposal, sources said.
They also approached Sindh government, defunct CDGK and now the KMC high-ups to use the Kashmir Road’s swimming pool and Women Sports Complex Swimming in Gulshan-e-Iqbal but lack of interest among the officials have been the reasons why these places have not been used for swimmers.
A PSF official said the top officials in the sports institutions of federal and provincial governments have failed to understand the importance of swimming in the development of any nation.
“After two devastating floods, the PSF officials tried their best to make the government functionaries understand that if swimming flourishes, the number of deaths and other losses can be reduced the next time such disasters strike,” said Fatima Lakhani, vice president of PSF and president of Pakistan Women Swimming Association (PWSA).
But the lethargic officials in the sports institutions did not even consider the proposals about swimming facilities, she regretted.
The swimming federation is one of the successful sports entities in the country as far as getting medals in international competitions is concerned.
The Pakistani women swimmers have bagged 75 medals, including four gold ones, in various international swimming events such as Women Islamic Games and South Asian Games.
At SAF Games level their performance has been awesome.
The sources in the federation said that women swimmers alone have won more than 50 medals in international events.
The government spends a lot of money on those sports which can bring only one medal after billions of rupees’ investment, although in swimming there are 38 medals in one event alone, the sources in the PSF said.
Veena Masood, who is secretary of PWSA and associate secretary of Pakistan Olympic Association, visited coastal belt of
Sindh, met the fishermen living there for centuries and requested them to provide training to their children who have natural talent of swimming, in the hope that proper training could give them a great chance to become international level swimmers.
She said this project needs a swimming pool as well as a hostel to train and educate these kids.
The parents of these kids declined to consider the proposal because the children go to fishing for their bread and butter, she said. The government should consider fixing a stipend for talented swimmers so that the parents of youngsters are enticed to permit their children to get proper training, she said.
A group of youngsters who swim in the privately-run pools in Karachi said there is an urgent need to reconsider the entire sports policy at the highest level.
Sports policy should be according to the expectations of the entire nation and all segments of sporting community, they said, referring to the preference given by the authorities to a few games which acquire success after funding of billions. |
