RAWALPINDI, Nov 4: President General Pervez Musharraf said Monday boxing will be given due recognition and increased the annual grant of Pakistan Amateur Boxing Federation (PABF) from Rs 200,000 to Rs. One Million.

“The annual grant has been enhanced till 2004 Olympic Games at Athens but it may continue if our pugilists keep up their good show at international level,” the chief of PABF, Prof Anwar Chowdhry told a news conference later in the evening.

Chowdhry, elected President of International Boxing Federation for a fifth four-year term at Cairo earlier this month, led a PABF team during the call on the President. His team included the boxers who won medals at 14th Asian Games at Busan last month.

Pakistani pugilists won one gold medal, the country’s only one at this Asiad, four silver and one bronze medal.

Chowdhry also disclosed that Pakistan has been awarded the third pre-olympics qualifying tournament, in April-may 2004, for the Athens Olympics Games.

“We arranged this tournament at home so that four-five pugilists qualify for Olympics by taking advantage of home conditions during the qualifiers,” he said. The Asian Boxing Championship will be held at Manila in January 2004.

“A sum of Rs. 2.5 or three million will be the cost of holding this pre-Olympics qualifier but I have taken the risk so that Pakistan sends maximum boxers to Olympics,” he said.

Records, are there to show that boxers have been contributing to the medals tally, won by Pakistani contingents of 200-250 strengths at the last five Asian Games,” Chowdhry said.

“Still this sport was not given the recognition and status it deserved,” Chowdhry said. “We had thorough discussions on boxing’s contribution in national sport and President Musharraf assured us that boxing will be given due recognition.”

Besides the increase in annual grant, President Musharraf also directed that five indoor stadiums in the Federal as well as the provincial capitals be set up, PABF chief said.

“The Stadium at Islamabad, Karachi and Quetta will be built immediately and the President approved grants of Rs one million each for these stadiums and those at Lahore and Peshawar will be built later,” he said.

“We impressed upon the President that indoor facilities were necessary because the noise inside such venues abroad sometimes affected the performance of our boxers.”

He said the President also enhanced the cash award for medal-winning boxers to Rs 500,000 for gold medals, Rs 200,000 for silver medals and Rs 100,000 for bronze medals.

In addition, he said, the President had also allocated a five acre plot to PABF near National Stadium in Karachi, for which Rs 10 million grant had also been approved.

“We will build a separate stadium at this venue and I will arrange another Rs 10-15 million for this purpose through my own resources,” Chowdhry said.

He said he had written to concerned authorities in June to arrange a two months training in European style” for better results at Asiad but the request was ignored.

“We would have won two or three more gold medals at Asiad if our boxers had been trained in European style which is more used internationally and is also the style of Kazakhastan, Uzbekistan pugilists to whom our own boxers lost a few finals at Busan,” said the boxing supremo who has been attached with international boxing since 1960.

He observed that with exceptions like that of boxing, Pakistan olympic sports were on the decline and for this responsibility lies — with those holding the reins of various federations.

“Though I am against sports policy, I accepted it as a way of getting rid of these people.”

He demanded that a public inquiry should be conducted for finding out the cause of this decline in the last about 20 years.

He said the congress had also decided to make it mandatory, through a legal bond, for a boxer in future to seek permission of his parent organisation, a national federation, before becoming professional.

“Our Commonwealth Games gold medalist didn’t go to Asian Games and we learnt that he left for England to become professional,” he said in explanation to the background of this decision.—APP