Professionals should be appointed in PFF, says Mujahid [Dawn]

Professionals should be appointed in PFF, says Mujahid [Dawn]

LAHORE: Former national team captain Col Mujahidullah Tareen has asked the incumbent Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) administrator Justice Asad Munir to appoint technically-qualified people in the country’s football governing body to put the game on the right track in the country.

Asad Munir has been appointed PFF administrator by the Lahore High Court following a split in the federation and Mujahid also asked him to take steps to recover the equipment which has gone missing from the federation.

“Administrator Asad Munir should appoint technically-qualified and professionally-experienced personnel harbouring passion to promote the sport in the country and possessing knowledge to run day to day affairs of PFF,” former PFF secretary Mujahid said in a press statement.

Mujahid, who was also PFF’s technical director, added: “Previously, non-technical people having vested interests were appointed to serve personal motives instead of football and as a result the chosen few earned personnel gains at the expense of football itself.

“All the vehicles, funds and equipments of PFF being misused and illegally detained by individuals, should be recovered immediately and a complaint may be registered with FIA in case of defaulters and looted money brought back.”

He hoped that Asad Munir would play his due role in sorting out the dispute between the two rival groups of the PFF and the culprits would be brought to their logical end.

“Asad Munir was a sportsman besides being a well-repute Justice and he will take decisions in the best interest of the football, the poor man’s game of Pakistan, which has been ruined by the vested interest and corruption of influential people,” Mujahid said.

“It is the irony of sports in Pakistan that there were so many cases lying pending in the courts, for one reason or the other and the people having vested interests wasting time and public money on court cases instead of promotion of sports.”

The PFF has been mired in crisis and controversy in recent months which has seen it split into two factions — one headed by Faisal Saleh Hayat and the other by Zahir Shah.

It has led to an interesting situation with world football governing body FIFA having said that Hayat is the genuine president of the PFF till Aug 31 while Asad Munir is running day-to-day affairs at the PFF headquarters according to LHC orders.