Pakistan Olympic Association

 

Waqar Hamza
 

 

The association is not allowed to directly import air weapons, which is hampering their efforts to spread this sport in the country although Admiral M Asif Sandila, Chief of Naval Staff, is its president.

 

Javed Lodhi, Secretary NRAP, told ‘The News’ that their president is helping them and has asked the association to meet the Ministry of Commerce regarding the import of air weapons. “Since the secretary of the ministry is out of country, we are meeting the additional secretary. We hope that this issue will be resolved soon, because this is a real hindrance for us,” he added.

 

The secretary said that only arm dealers are allowed to directly import weapons. “The sport is getting popular in Pakistan. We have recently started training programmes in around 40 to 50 schools and colleges, therefore, we are in the dire need of equipment,” said the secretary.

 

He further said that they have initiated these programmes in many educational institutes across the country, including Government College Lahore, University of Punjab, Women University Peshawar. “So the need is there, we have to boost this sport because we have a lot of talent in it. Besides this direct import issue, we have some 80 percent duties on the import of air weapons, which is another blow to the sport,” he added.

 

Javed said that after getting this approval to import they would go for the elimination of duties. “Currently, without duties one rifle costs Rs350,000 and pistol costs Rs150,000. We have 55 percent duty, 15 percent sales tax, and 5 percent income tax, so this all goes around 80 percent. One can guess how difficult it is for this sport to flourish,” said the secretary.

 

The secretary said that this sport is in much advanced state in neighbouring India, as their 11 players are participating in Olympics 2012. “They know that they can’t beat Europe in athletics, so they have developed sports like shooting in which they have excelled a lot,” he added.

 

He claimed that the annual budget India has for this game is Rs500 million and Iran has $5 million budget only for shooting, but

 

“here in Pakistan we have annual grant of Rs1.2 million, and out of that Rs0.4 million are spent on paying fees to international bodies. The amount we need to spend on the preparations of one shooter is Rs5 million a year,” he informed.

 

To a question about Pakistan’s qualifying for London Olympics, he said they stand a chance on re-allocated quota because they have 18 shooters with qualifying scores. An announcement about this would be made by the international federation in a week, he said.

 

It may be noted here that 4,272 shooters of 117 nations are in the list with minimum qualifying score (MQS) for Olympics 2012 qualifiers. Pakistan has 18 shooters in this list while India has 137 shooters.

 

According to the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF), “participation in the Olympic Shooting events is not guaranteed. Each national shooting federation must earn ‘Quota Places’ — one starting position to send athletes to the next Olympic Games. Only a total of 390 athletes will be able to compete in the 15 events across the Olympic disciplines at the Games. Quota Places are generally awarded when an athlete wins a gold medal at the ISSF World Cups or posts a top finish at the ISSF World Championships or Continental Championships Africa, America, Asia, Europe, Oceania — in the years before the Olympic Games.”