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Polo needs government’s patronage

By Zahiruddin

CHITRAL: The players of polo have demanded of the government to promote the game which is retreat for lack of official patronage. Talking to chitraltimes.com here on Sunday, they said that polo is the local game and is one of the attractions for tourists and it attracts large number foreign tourists in the Shandur polo festival every year. They said that polo is the most expensive game for which one has to rear a horse which consumes fodder amounting to thousands of rupees every month. They said that in the past, more than fifty teams competed in the district polo tournament but now hardly twenty teams turned up which depicted the decreasing popularity of the game. A retired polo player Taj Mohammad Figar said that in the 1970s, the government fixed allowance for the polo players which was sufficient enough to meet the expenses of the horse and this encouraged them. He said that polo tournaments used to be held twice a year and hundreds of players from all the nooks and corners of the district thronged to Chitral. He said that the game was highly popular among the ruler rulers of the princely state of Chitral and it is due to this reason that almost every village in the district has a polo ground still today. The rulers used to play by themselves and they kept a corps of horses for the war times as well. Regarding the present amount of allowance being paid to the players, a player said that it has not been revised since 1980 while the rupee has devalued manifold and the amount is quite nominal. He said that the amount is enough just to support the expenses of horse for two weeks of the year and most of the players have given up to raise horse because they cannot stand the expenses. The players said that the ministry of tourism must patronize the game which in turn promotes tourism in the area. They also demanded patronage of the other government departments and commercial banks in the same way of Chitral Scouts and Chitral police who have two their polo teams and have recruited polo players. They eulogized the role of Chitral scouts in the development of the game and demanded that different government departments should maintain their polo teams and employ the players.