161 stakeholders benefit from PCB’s financial initiative

LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has paid a total of Rs1.95 million to 161 stakeholders of the game including first-class cricketers, match officials, ground staff and scorers who fullfilled the criteria, as one-time help in the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis.

According to a press release issued by the PCB on Monday, it has paid Rs25,000 each to 16 first-class cricketers. The sum total of these cricketers is Rs 400,000.

Twenty-one match officials received a sum of Rs315,000 (Rs15,000 apiece). Moreover, 124 ground staff and scorers received a total of Rs12,40,000, each of them getting Rs10,000.

Though the total amount given by the PCB to the players, match officials, ground staff and scorers is quite scanty when compared with one-month salaries of several top PCB officials who are earning in millions, the effort at this crunch time might have reduced some financial burden of the most needy individuals in the cricket fraternity.

“Most of the people who have benefitted from this initiative are the ones who were previously associated with the cricket board and as a responsible organisation we strongly believe that it was binding on us to provide whatever assistance we could,” said the PCB press release.

“While these payments may be a token of support, we have attempted to reach out to as many as possible to minimise the financial blow in these difficult and unprecedented times.”

It is pertinent to mention here that the PCB showed more generosity towards Prime Minister’s Covid-19 Pandemic Relief Fund, by contributing a hefty Rs10 million to it, instead of adequately helping deserving members of the cricket community, without which the game cannot flourish.

Separately, PCB chief executive and chief operating officer made contributions to the Chairman’s Welfare Fund late last week.

Here it may be relevant to mention that as both domestic and local cricket are currently suspended by the government, a large number of umpires, scorers and ground staff have not earned a single penny for the last three months.

The same unfortunate situation is being faced by the stakeholders of other sports including field hockey, football, baseball, table tennis, badminton and athletics.

However, despite facing hardship the sports community in Pakistan so far has not been able to come up with a strong appeal to the government to get the venues open for resuming sports activities with all safety measures (SOPs) in place to avoid the spread of coronavirus.

Published in Dawn, June 9th, 2020