Asif Bajwa appointed secretary-general of Pakistan Hockey Federation in place of under-fire Shahbaz Ahmed

Karachi: Olympian Asif Bajwa was reappointed officially as the secretary-general of the Pakistan Hockey Federation in Karachi on Tuesday replacing the legendary Shahbaz Ahmed. Bajwa’s appointment was ratified at the PHF’s Executive Board and later by the Congress members as he replaced the under-fire Shahbaz, during whose tenure, Pakistan slipped in FIH rankings with virtually no domestic activity along with financial mismanagement. [caption id=“attachment_7044081” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of Pakistan Hockey Federation secretary-general Asif Bajwa. Image credit: Twitter/@PHFOfficial[/caption] “From today, we have only one mission as a federation to take Pakistan hockey forward and increase domestic activities. It is a big relief for us that today the National Hockey Championship has started again after a gap of two years,” Bajwa told the media at the Abdul Sattar Edhi hockey stadium. Bajwa, who also remained secretary of the PHF between 2008 and 2013 has been brought in again by President, Brigadier (retd) Sajjad Khokar who is still reeling from accusations of nepotism and financial mismanagement during his three year tenure. Khokar has refused to step down even after Pakistan’s poor performance in the last World Cup in India where the team finished 11th. Bajwa said that the executive board and Congress had made it clear that a new system of financial transparency and internal audit be implemented in the PHF immediately so that all funds and expenditures of the federation were transparent. Bajwa said the PHF would now be regularly posting its accounts and expenses on its website so that everything remained transparent. “We will also be having regular international audits of our accounts,” he said. Even the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan is said to be unhappy with the happenings in the tenure of Khokar and Shahbaz and it is yet to release any more funds to the PHF since the World Cup in December.