PESHAWAR: The office-bearers of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Hockey Association (KPHA) on Wednesday alleged financial mismanagement in the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) funds and asked the national accountability bureau to conduct probe into the matter and take action against the accused persons involved in the case.

Speaking at a news conference at the Qayyum Sports Complex, PHF senior vice-president Mohammad Saeed Khan and KPHA secretary Syed Zahir Shah appealed to the Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, who is also Patron-in-Chief of the Pakistan Hockey Federation to question the management of the PHF for alleged grass violation of the rules and regulations.

They alleged that huge funds were withdrawn from bank on single signature which was totally illegal as the funds were in joint-account of president and secretary of the PHF.

They also expressed displeasure over the treatment meted out to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa teams in the National Under-16 Hockey Championship as all its three sides that had gone to participate were returned from the tournament being played in Khairpur.

“Our fault is that we have questioned the huge drawing of money from different accounts without fulfilling the required criteria and the PHF management in returned sent our three teams, which had been properly selected after conducting trials, back to Peshawar by not allowing them to participate,” said Zahir.

He alleged the PHF Secretary Shahbaz Ahmad senior had verbally told the organisers of the championship not to allow the KP teams to play in the event.

Zahir accused Shahbaz of misappropriating the federation funds. He said the government provided Rs460 million funds to PHF during the last two years and out of this amount Rs220 million were drawn without completing the necessary procedure.

“Two persons are required to sign a cheque in case of PHF millions of rupees were drawn on a single signature from the federation account,” he added while showing the copy of the withdrawn cheques.

He informed that Shahbaz had withdrawn over Rs.3.3 million on October 7, 2017 and on another account and close associate of Shahbaz had drawn Rs235,500 on October 21, 2017. Showing the copies of the withdrawals to media, he claimed that he had proofs to prove his claims.

He shared some details of these withdrawals with the media. He said that over Rs.116.5 millions had been withdrawn from the PHF account in just five months from November 2016 to March 2017.

He said the KPHA had brought these anomalies into the notice of PHF but to no avail. He said that neither a meeting of the PHF congress was held nor any provincial or district or senior hockey championships was organised during the past two years. He questioned the selection for the national team, saying mismanagement and corruption were the major reasons of hockey’s decline in the country.

Published in Dawn, November 23rd, 2017