MD ANWAR ULLAH, Dhaka: Bangladesh Swimming Federation (BSF) is set to hold a meeting this week in its desperate bid to resume swimming activities in phases after a seven-month hiatus following the countrywide outbreak of deadly coronavirus as elsewhere across the world.
The federation insiders, however, think that persisting COVID-19 threat stands in the way of resuming activities as a bone of contention for the greater issue of swimmers’ safety.
While talking to The Independent the previous day, BSF General Secretary M Badrul Saif said his federation has been looking forward eagerly to work out as to how they can resume operations since getting the green signal from the ministry concerned.
He also informed that they will have a meeting of the executive committee (EC) this week to discuss about their next course of action.
Chances are there, he said, to discuss about resuming activities with a long distance swimming competition and organising a national meet at the forefront.
“We’re really very much afraid of organising any contest as COVID-19 may spread through water. But the EC will have a meeting this week to set a guideline as to how we can begin. We’ve a plan to organise a long distance swimming contest and the National Swimming Championship in a limited scale,” Badrul Saif informed.
“We had plenty of programmes this year for organizing national and international meets. But COVID-19 outbreak in the mid-March destroyed all those as the Ministry of Youth and Sports were forced to call off all scheduled programmes,” he continued.
“Apart from our routine programmes of national and junior national meets, we had also plans for the Bangladesh Games and an international competition (senior level), the Bangabandhu meet with participation of the SAF regional countries to celebrate the ‘Mujib Borsha,’ the centenary birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Besides, our domestic competitions were scheduled to take place in July-August.”
According to the BSF secretary, “The Bangabandhu Meet was planned to be organised with participation of eight regional countries spreading across 32 disciplines, but all our dreams vanished following the pandemic. Even now, we are afraid of the deadly coronavirus’ second wave.”
Replying to a query, he said, “Now our plan is to organise the long distance competition first, then we’ll organise the national meet. But it’ll be organised in a limited scale with limited participants. We’ll try as there’ll not be a huge gathering. You know national meet is usually meant for huge gathering with hundreds of people, including the participants, officials and judges from across the country.”
But, he concluded, “it’s also remarkable that swimming is yet to start anywhere in the world although some of European and Latin American countries started football, tennis and cricket formally.”
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