The Union Council level of the Punjab Youth Sports Festival, that started simultaneously throughout the province among 3464 UCs carries a prize money of Rs 110,700 while providing an opportunity to the participants from the first level to stake their claim for top award by moving to the next level.
The events of the second level started in the province from an intake from respective UCs and the residents of the concerned UC were only eligible to take part in the events, which are open for all. As the 30 events of five sectors started in the province the activity in the provincial capital formally begins today (Monday).
In the other districts of Punjab, though activity was slow due to continuous rain but still then 164 events were conducted among 569 Union Councils that had competitions between 11233 participants out of which 3960 won their competitions.
Gujranwala, Sargodha and Faisalabad had over 2500 participants each while at Rawalpindi, Multan and Dera Ghazi Khan over 1500 took part from each divisions.
According to Director General Sports Board and Youth Affairs Punjab Mr. Usman Anwar, the sports sector events include arm wrestling, which have three categories, athletics (eight categories), badminton, billiard, cricket tape ball, tug or war, volleyball, bodybuilding (also have three categories), football, fun race of 2.5 kilometres and weightlifting (three categories).
The inter elementary school competitions are being held separately among male and female students under the supervision of Education Department at Markaz level, he added.
An impartial selection committee will select a best of the best team of the Union Council to compete in the Tehsil level, which is the third phase of the festival.
“We have already broke the world record of participation in the first level as the participation was around 1.5 million as compared to the previous world record of around 800,000,” said Usman.
The competitions at the Union Council level will continue till September 18 and the Tehsil level will start to initiate the third level of the festival.
The events and competitions are being held at 3464 union councils which have 11 sporting events and remaining others are in general categories.
The general events, Usman Anwar said have naat khani, qirat and cooking while family event includes cooking, family dressing, healthy baby competitions and kitchen gardening while the education sector, have debate, essay writing, milli naghme, naat khani, painting and qirat competitions.
“We expect another record of participation as the Sports Board Punjab-organized walk to celebrate the success of the PYS first level and awareness on dengue on Sunday also yielded record participation of 50,000,” he added.
