The Punjab Youth Sports Festival 2012 began among the 55200 Sports and Youth Development Councils (S&YDCs) at Neighbourhood and Village level throughout the province with the entire focus remained on reviving of the sports culture and healthy activities.
In Lahore alone competitions in athletics, badminton, billiard, cricket tape ball, arms wrestling, tug of war and volleyball started at 9 am and by noon the events were concluded except from some of the union councils and towns where the last day’s rain left the fields and ground unplayable. In these localities and areas the events were postponed for the next day. On the sideline of the Punjab Youth and Sports Festival, special dengue awareness campaign was also launched by the officials and organisers at the neighbourhood and village union councils of all the nine towns of Lahore including Gulberg, Iqbal, Nashtar, Samanabad, Ravi, Data Ganj Baksh, Shalimar, Aziz Bhatti and Wahga.
The honourable and respected personalities of these towns declared open the competitions at their respective councils. The UC 1 and 2 held dengue awareness walk before the start of the regular PYSF events while at UC 41 before the beginning of proper festival activities a seminar on dengue awareness was held. At UC 31 and 32, Baja Line A beat their B team 2-1 in volleyball competition while Baray Mian Dars Reds defeated their Whites team 2-1 in Tug of war contest. In arms wrestling, five bouts were held and the winners were Shahzad Mehmood, Ijaz Nawaz, Suraj Mukhtar, Akash Sohail and Imran Zeeshan. They beat Khalid Youhana, Zamran Hameed, Atif John, Najad Akram and Shahbaz Rafiq respectively. Naseer Ahmed Bhutta, MNA, was the chief guest of the day at UC 31 and 32. He was introduced with the participants and later he enjoyed different competitions held among the council members. The competition at Govt Science College Wahadat Road started at its normal time. Honorable Arshad Ali Mian (Chairman Sports) was the chief guest of the opening ceremony. In all 112 players participated in different events of the festival while 54 players from Union Council 110 and 58 from Union Council 111 locked their horns for top honour.
PYF initiation a welcome step: CM: Punjab Chief Minister, Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif has said that starting of Punjab Youth Festival at union council level throughout the province is a welcoming step. He said that not only new talent will emerge out at local level through this mega event started for youth but healthy activities will also be promoted in an organized manner all over the province.
He said that by holding Punjab Youth Festival, Punjab government has arranged a platform for providing equal opportunities to the citizens for displaying their abilities. He said that besides sports, Punjab Youth Festival has been made more interesting and popular by including the competitions of extracurricular activities in this mega event. He was talking to a delegation of youth, here on Sunday. Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif said that youth are the guarantee to bright future of Pakistan. He said that only those nations have made tremendous progress which equipped their young generation with latest knowledge and utilized all-out resources on them. He said that information technology has become an admitted fact and due to it, the world has become a global village.
