The Pakistan contingent at the South Asian Games in Dhaka. —AFP/File Photo
ISLAMABAD: Officials at the helm of Pakistan’s underperforming sports bodies are to assemble in a bid to workout ways to revive the frail condition of sports in the country, but without any sports management and marketing experts, Dawn has learnt.An official close to the ongoing developments said that the first meeting of Prime Minister’s Task Force on Sports would be held here at the Federal Sports Ministry today.
The official said that a number of politicians, federal and provincial government officials and education experts were designated with a task under PM’s initiative to arrest the decline of sports.
“The task force is also assigned to architect a sports policy covering the sports and education sector to revive national sports,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
However, sports analyst Amir Bilal, who is closely monitoring Pakistan’s sports, said: “Prior to this meeting such initiatives were planned, however, there was no outcome because of unavailability of professionals in the fields concerned.”
The PM’s task force on sports has a heavy agenda for Thursday’s meeting but there is little hope to reach a consensus for the betterment of sports in the country.
The task force would discuss the roles of national sports federations, provisional sports bodies, public and corporate organisations to support and patronise sports, need to priorities selected sports and to explore ways and means to generate additional revenue for sports.
“The agenda of the task force is massive,” he said. The Pakistan Sports Board “is without specialised sports professionals.”
Amir insisted that without sports management and sports marketing experts the whole exercise would be futile.
He pointed out: “The creation of revenue streams for the development of sports is a specialised area which is beyond the scope of ex-international sports persons, who are running the administrative and management affairs of federations, boards and sports associations.”
Commenting over the education sports aspect, he said that “sports education is a highly specialised area of expertise where sport is used as a tool for teaching life skills through improvised education interventions.”
He said that never in the history of Pakistan’s education policy sports education had been given due attention that had resulted in degeneration of sports in education institutions throughout Pakistan.
“A policy debacle had already taken place two decades back when sports were separated from Ministry of Education which resulted in today’s sports disaster,” he concluded.
Source: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/sport/task-force-meeting-without-sports-specialists-futile-530
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