Daily Times

Wapda Sports Board has diluted its cricket team and opted to send them on field tasks or fire them, Daily Times reported.

This order will have an impact on star cricketers Salman Butt, Asif, Wahab Riaz, and Kamran Akaml.

The Wapda cricket team’s contract and permanent personnel were given two options: join field chores or go home.

Wapda cricketers who were paid on a monthly basis were also fired.

Other organizations are deciding how to react in light of the Wapda Sports Board’s direction, including the Gujranwala Electric Power Company (Gepco), which has given orders to 21 permanent and contract staff.

According to sources, the Wapda Sports Board issued the departmental directive after all chances of continuing departmental cricket faded.

The action came after Prime Minister Imran Khan dismantled cricket’s departmental structure, which resulted in the layoff of thousands of cricketers.

The federal government issued a notice in September requesting all government departments, enterprises, and autonomous entities to stop financing sports teams and instead redirect funds to regional teams.

A copy of that letter was sent to chairmen of the Pakistan International Airlines, Islamabad, Wapda, Higher Education Commission, Railways, FBR, IGs of Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Jammu & Kashmir and President National Bank of Pakistan.

“In a meeting on revamping of sports governance structure in Pakistan held under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister of Pakistan on Sept 1, the Honourable Prime Minister was pleased to desire to discontinue funding to the departmental sport teams of various government agencies/corporations/autonomous bodies and, instead these funds may be utilized for the promotion of regional sports teams,” the additional secretary of the Ministry for Inter-Provincial Coordination Mohsin Mushtaq Chandna has written in a letter which was received in different departments working under the government.

He further asked them to divert funding to regional teams.

“In order to implement the directions of the Honorable Prime Minister, you are therefore requested to prepare a practical transition plan to divert funding from departmental teams to regional teams, within two months, which should be implemented in a period of six months with effect from March 1, 2022,” the letter concluded.