Swimming infrastructure in Pakistan
After going through many hardships, swimming has finally started reaching the heights of a well known sport in Pakistan.
This boost has been the outcome of increasing number of swimming pools all over Pakistan, availability of these pools to public, increasing number of competitions organized every year by Pakistan Swimming Federation, and, media coverage to these competitions
highlighting swimming stars at each competition.
Now a days, the number of swimming pools are increasing everywhere in Pakistan. But there is still something that Pakistan needs to accomplish, the maintenance of pools and professional coaches. Public pools have major problems with maintenance, which includes
filthy water, inappropriate amount of chlorine in the water and lack of professionals to teach competitive swimming.
Most public pools lack funds to maintain their pools or do not bother to do so and change their unfiltered pool water once in a year and sometimes these pools have insects and rodents.
This filthy water causes ear, eye, and, skin infection to the people and, thus, deters people from swimming. These problems are common in both open and covered swimming pools.
Pakistan Swimming Federation oversight of public pool maintenance is urgently required.
However, there has been a constant increase in the popularity of swimming due to coverage of swimming competitions and swimming stars by the media. Competitive participants have been increasing due to arrangement of swimming competitions at all different
levels, including school, college, university, district, provincial and national levels.
Participation in these events is mostly on the basis of age brackets i.e. under 8, under 10, under 12, under 14, under 16, under 18 and open. Some occassional events are also organized by public or private clubs.
Swimmers are awarded medals, certificates and sometimes cash prizes on their performances by the host or by their home federation. They are facilitated by accommodation from hosts and allowances from their home federations, which may differ among different
teams depending on their policies.
Several issues arise sometimes from the host side in a swimming event, which include inappropriate accommodation, absence of medals or certificates or disciplinary issues. There is a need to take measures for such issues so an event could be organized smoothly
or without any discrimination among schools, cities or provinces.
Issues from the home side include fraudulent allowances, inappropriate transport, and food. These common issues on the both sides can be solved by collaboration among swimming associations or reviewing the policy of an association.
Moreover, Pakistan Swimming Federation does not own a single pool where it could train its national swimmers at the moment, and it is still under construction.
Sometimes swimmers pay from their own pockets to get a membership of a swimming pool where they could do their training or sometimes their respective swimming associations hire them a pool and assign a coach.
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