Karachi – Pakistan, FEB 26, 2012: General retired Arif Hasan, who was recently re-elected as head of the Pakistan Olympic Association (POA), has announced convening national sports convention in next three months in which issues related to development and promotion of sports in the country would be discussed.
He was speaking at a reception hosted by Sports Journalists Association Sindh (SJAS) his honour on his re-election here Saturday at the KUJ office. Arif said the convention would be held in major cities of the country starting from Karachi where all the major stake holders in sports would be invited to speak and submit their proposal for the betterment of sports.
When reminded that during the last six decades a number of such conventions were held but they hardly contributed in the development of the sports or removing the bottlenecks and shortcomings in the way of sports, he said in his proposed conventions he had planned to invite multinational companies, government, sports leaders and journalists and hoped that it would be much different from those held in the past.
He thanked SJAS for making him the first chief of the POA to visit KPC and speak to sports journalists and added the journalistic community could contribute a lot in the proper development and removing the short comings that had blocked the growth of sports in the country. He hoped that presence of representatives of the multinational companies would make a big difference in the final outcome of the conventions. Present at the reception were president of PSWF and SJAS Rashid Siddiqui, Secretary Obaid Awan, secretary KUJ Fahim Siddiqui, President GM Jamali and secretary general of PFUJ Amin Yousuf. They also spoke on the occasion. Secretary SOA Ali Ahmed and associate secretary engineer Mahfooz ul Haq accompanied the POA head at the reception.
Arif Hasan who two days ago had suggested holding of first National Beach Games at Karachi disclosed that he along with the representatives of SOA visited places on the beaches near the city where such kind of games could be held. He hoped that infrastructure for the games could be set up at the selected places which may in future help Pakistan to plan bidding SAF Beach Games and even Asian beach games.
Responding to a query on the existence of parallel bodies, he said there was no room for any parallel bodies under the POA rules which clearly states that every national federation should be recognised by three of the four provincial Olympics associations and three of the departments affiliated with the POA had to be their members. All the national federations with the POA had fulfilled these conditions and if there was any hint of parallel bodies it was because of the court cases that had been filed by different groups because of alleged irregularities in elections of those bodies, he added.
He also assured the media that there would be honest and fair distribution of accreditation cards to the media for international events. There had been some lapses in the past but things had improved and there would be fair distribution of the media accreditation, he added. BY–ANISUDDIN KHAN
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