WAPDA HONOURS ITS PLAYERS

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Lahore – January 15, 2018: The Pakistan Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) Chairman and WAPDA Sports Board (WSB) Patron-in-Chief Lt Gen Muzammil Hussain (Retd) had a meeting today with the WAPDA sportspersons to felicitate them on their achievements, encourage them for their future endeavors and share his vision for promotion of sports in Pakistan.

The players who met the Chairman included Muhammad Waseem, World Flyweight Boxing Champion; Nauh Dastgir Butt and Talha Talib, gold and silver medalists in Common Wealth Weightlifting Championship 2017; Muhammad Inam Butt and Inayatullah gold medalists of World Beach Wrestling Championship 2017 and Asad Iqbal, gold medalist in 4x400 relay race in Indoor Asian Games 2017 in Turkmenistan, and the players of WAPDA teams who recently won National Championships in Volleyball and Badminton.

            WAPDA Secretary and WSB President, Advisor, Director General and other senior officers were also present on the occasion.

            Addressing the sportspersons, Lt Gen Muzammil Hussain (Retd) said that bringing improvement in sports in Pakistan with objective to win gold medal in Olympics is our target. He said that WSB would make all out efforts to minimize the problems faced by sports fraternity and allocate more resources for welfare of the players involving better pays and remunerations. Emphasizing upon significance of sports, the Chairman opined that sports alone can be the catalyst and the tool to overcome the national issues ranging from terrorism, illiteracy to fragile economy and can be a source of national harmony, and positive results can be attained with focus on sports.

            Later, the Chairman gave away cash prizes of Rs.200,000 to each of six WAPDA international players, Rs.500,000 to Volleyball team, Rs.500,000 to Men’s Badminton team and Rs.500,000 to Women’s Badminton team. He said that WAPADA Volleyball team, being National Champion will be sent to Myanmar to participate in Asian Club Volleyball Championship for exposure and competition.

It is pertinent to mention that WAPDA has been patronizing sports in Pakistan for more than five decades. WAPDA is the biggest employer of sportspersons in Pakistan,     as more than 2200 players and sport officials are associated with various units of WAPDA Sports Board across the country. WAPDA players have not only been showing their class at the national level but also bringing laurels to Pakistan in international competitions. WAPDA has 65 teams – 37 men and 28 women – of different games. At present, WAPDA is national champion in 32 sports and runners-up in 18 disciplines. In the year 2017 and January 2018 alone, WAPDA managed to win 19 national championships besides securing 7 gold, 11 silver and 38 bronze medals for Pakistan in various international events. It has also introduced four initiatives in sports for improvement in standard of sports and betterment of players. These initiatives include ‘WAPDA Endowment Fund for Sports’ to elevate the standard of sports in Pakistan; ‘WAPDA Athletics Colts’ to promote athletics in the country; ‘Focus on Fitness and Fielding’ and ‘T-12 Cricket’ to improve fielding in Pakistan’s cricket.