Thickets welcome visitors to sports complex

The sole sports arena in the small town of Pind Dadan Khan in Jhelum district has wild foliage and thickets growing on all sides with the administration and staff seemingly uninterested in fixing the situation.

The ground of the sports complex, the Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan Government High School Stadium, is full of bushes and grass growing wild. Visitors say that the staff employed at the complex work for a day or two when pressured and then go back to disregarding ground maintenance.

The vast arena with multiple sporting facilities is now only used for football and badminton. The football ground lacks grass altogether with young men forced to play on the abrasive soil surface that can cause injuries.

Meanwhile, the area used by cricket enthusiasts is full of unkempt grass and thickets. Boys regularly complain of losing balls in the wild foliage and the dangers of insects and reptiles, particularly snakes and scorpions, when searching for them.

Muhammad Ali, a teenage cricket enthusiast, said they often end up using several balls. “On the days when we don’t have extra balls, our matches often end because we cannot find the ball,” he said. Those who have been coming to the stadium for a while say there have been multiple uplift efforts including upgradation work for huge sums ‘but the contractors left the work unfinished’.

A visit to the sports complex shows incomplete tracks, poles without lights or wiring, broken benches and unmarked arenas. Locals say millions were spent on the parking area in the stadium with the ‘space and resources wasted’ due to lack of usage.

As per details, there are three employees appointed by the government to take care of the sports complex. Regular visitors say they had been assured of improvement on multiple occasions but no work had taken place.

One of those workers reportedly said that he was paid Rs25,000 per month for the work which wasn’t enough remuneration for the upkeep of the complex.

They say that officials aren’t interested in improvement either with ‘the district sports officer having not visited the sports complex even one in the last year’.

Locals including those belonging to the sports community say they have written to the Jhelum have deputy commissioner, retired Captain Samiullah, and the Pind Dadan Khan Assistant Commissioner Anwar Ali Kanju regarding the situation of the ground and urged them to ensure its upkeep.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 9^th, 2023.