While you’re at it: Probe committee to look into financial corruption

PM directs panel investigating Hockey World League fiasco to also look into PHF affairs.

KARACHI: The probe committee formed by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for the hockey team’s failure to qualify for the Olympics will also investigate into financial corruption in the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) from July 23.

The committee blamed the PHF for the team’s poor performance in their first report submitted to the PM.

The PM has not taken any action on the report by the PM but the committee has been assigned an additional task to look for any financial corruption by the current PHF management. Many of the players have been complaining about a financial crisis in hockey and the team has missed several events due to a lack of finances despite the PHF being granted funds by different organisations.

The PHF had been asking for a Rs500-million grant from the government to run its proposed affairs. The Ministry of Inter-Provincial Coordination submitted a summary to the prime minister almost a year back with the recommendation to sanction an annual grant of Rs350 million to the PHF.

However, the premier, expressing reservations over the misuse of funds released to the PHF during the previous government, asked for an audit of PHF accounts before the release of fresh funds. Meanwhile, a committee formed by the PHF to investigate into the failure to qualify for the Olympics has met five players — captain Muhammad Imran, goalkeeper Imran Butt, Muhammad Waqas Sharif, Tousiq Arshad and Muhammad Rizwan Senior.

The committee has discussed the Olympics qualification failure with the players, who held the financial crisis responsible for the loss.

They also gave the same reasons to the prime minister’s committee, saying that the team should have been sent to Belgium a month before the event to get used to the conditions and play enough practice matches as they had not played much international hockey in recent months.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 18^th, 2015.

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