Prime Minister Imran Khan inaugurated the Kamyab Jawan Sports Drive at Jinnah Stadium in Islamabad on Monday.
He, while highlighting the importance of sports for a healthy life and giving the youth a mental strength to fight the challenges in life, expressed his government’s resolve to spread a network of sports grounds across the country.
“When you learn to compete in ground, you also learn to win and also learn to face defeat…When there comes a difficult time in the life of a person, he or she faces that challenge with courage,” he said during the inauguration ceremony of the drive.
The drive is part of new four projects worth Rs4 billion initiated by the present government in coordination with Kamayab Jawan Programme and the Higher Education Commission to keep the country’s youth engaged in sports and extracurricular activities.
The prime minister said that since the country’s 70 percent of population is under the age of 30 years, the present government has so far developed 300 and 260 sports grounds in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, respectively.
He said that as New Zealand, a country of just 5 million population, has more sports grounds than Pakistan – a country of 220 million people, the present government is striving to develop sports grounds in every village, town, tehsil and district across the country.
The prime minister said as a new sports policy has also been announced, the government is taking all measures to strengthen the sports bodies and organisations and eliminate mafias from sports.
Besides the promotion of sports activities, Imran Khan said that the government is also focusing on education and has disbursed Rs47 billion in scholarships to 6.3 million youth, the highest number of scholarships in country’s history.
