Lahore, 1 April: The expansion of AID-27’s objectives, due to Pakistan Football Federation (PFF)’s President Makhdoom Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat, will help Pakistan soccer to further boost up its future mission and new qualified coaches, both men and women, could be recruited to further streamline the PFF Youth Development Programme which is a part of the Vision Asia. The Scheme is also being used to enhance the administration of the PFF Youth development Cell besides spending on the coaches’s education. This is stated by PFF’s Secretary General Lt.Col ® Ahmed Yar Khan Lodhi who attended a purposeful AID-27 workshop at Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City that saw the representatives of 28 AFC Member Associations deliberate ways and means to further increase the efficacy of AFC’s developmental grant program.
It was memorable 17 March 2011 when Faisal Saleh Hayat earned yet another honor, becoming the Chairman of AFC Legal Committee during the AFC Executive Committee (EXCO) Meet at Kuala Lumpur and The House approved two proposals of Faisal Saleh Hayat. One of them was the increased in amount of AFC AID-27 Financial Assistance Scheme to US$ 200,000 per year. The increment will allow PFF to engage more youth Coaches for imparting training to the young footballers of different age groups under Grass Root and Youth Development Program.
The Vietnam’s Workshop was opened by AFC President Mohamed Bin Hammam in the presence of AFC VP Yousef Al Serkal and FIFA ExCo Manilal Fernando. Hammam called upon the participants of the workshop to put the fund to good use. “This programme was started in 1996 when myself was head of AFC Finance Committee to help and support the needy Member Associations, Today we have reached a stage where each Member Association will get US$ 200,000 per year” recalled Bin Hammam. “In fact AFC started it before FIFA started its Financial Assistance Programme.”
AID-27 was started in 1996 by AFC to provide financial assistance to the Member Associations towards developmental expenses, and over the years its membership has increased from 27 to 29 associations, while the corpus now stands at US$ 200,000 per year for each Member Association as compared to the US$72,000 when it was started.
Meanwhile, PFF Chief stressed on the importance of proper utilization of the fund which will provide more opportunities to develop youth football and help PFF embrace the modern aspects of the game. The Workshop which has been specifically designed to enlighten the NAs on the objective of the financial assistance scheme as well as proper processing of documents and the procedure to submit the work plans. The scheme wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for the solidarity in AFC, where the bigger nations forsook their share of the AID-27 funds. It is better to discuss and propose a mechanism as well as a transparent monitoring procedure by which this fund can be better utilized.”
This workshop gives us a chance to lend our voice and opinions about AID-27. I thank the AFC President for organizing this workshop. Getting 10 per cent of the AFC budget for a program like this is not easy but he has accomplished this. The participants brainstormed on the best methods to deploy the US$200,000 grant, the procedures that needed to be observed and the monitoring of funds to maintain total transparency, ” concluded Lodhi.