Chandigarh, June 6:
Punjab Sports Minister Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer announced that the new sports policy will play a pivotal role in reviving sports culture in the state and further giving a push to sports.
Presiding over a review meeting to review the sports policy with the top officials of the department, experts and representatives of various sports bodies at the local Punjab Bhawan, the Sports Minister said that the Government led by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has been working dedicatedly to make Punjab a leading state in sports again.
He said that after the suggestions of the people and discussions with the experts, the draft sports policy has been prepared and a series of meetings are going on to make it better. He directed that a clear provision should be made in the new sports policy to provide jobs to medal winners at the national and international level. The policies of other states and facilities given to players were also discussed in the meeting.
He said that it has to be started from the village level to create a sports culture and produce players in the state. He expressed satisfaction that over Khedan vatan Punjab diyan have been successful in achieving this objective in Punjab and in the coming time these games will be taken to greater heights. He also stressed that giving good diet and better living facilities to the players will boost the morale of the players and they will be able to pay better attention to their game. He also issued directions to the officials to explore the possibility of building new sports hostels.
During the meeting, the Sports Minister assured that the Punjab Government would pay special attention to para-athletes. Discussions were also held to give a further boost to para sports. Many other aspects of the new sports policy and various topics were discussed during the meeting so that while the sports policy encourages new players, it will provide a better future to the winning players and retired players.
Those who attended the meeting includes hockey Olympian and Arjun Awardee Surinder Singh Sodhi, additional chief secretary sports Sarvjit Singh, Director Sports Harpreet Singh Sudan, Punjab Sports University VC Jagbir Singh Cheema, NIS, sports associations, school and higher education representatives etc.
