ludhiana with four out of the five academies in the city getting only half of the diet charges promised by the punjab sports department if the health of punjab hockey looks frail do not blame them most of the academies are managing with their own funds so that the training of players does not sufferin an effort to regain the glory of hockey in punjab sports director and former hockey player pargat singh tried to breathe life into the sport by providing aid to five academies in malwa dorahan jakhar kila raipur and sudhar however only one of these academies located in malwa is getting promised diet charges of rs 120 per player per day all the other academies are only getting rs 60 per day for each playerafter the repeated promises made at public functions finance minister manpreet singh badal also declared in the 201011 budget of the punjab government that each budding hockey player in the selected academies would get daily meal of value rs 120 but promise has not been delivered yet jagmeet garewal in charge of the malwa academy said due to high inflation meal charges of players have been affected badly an amount of rs 60 is not enough to feed the budding hockey players of the country last year in a statelevel function at pau finance minister manpreet singh badal had announced that diet charges would be increased to rs 120 this was mentioned in the budget also but nothing has happened yet he addedlauding the efforts of pargat singh to revive the hockey legacy of punjab garewal clarified that government was still paying very little to run the academies he said all the academies are basically founded by the ngos working for the uplift of sports and most of the expenses are being borne by them the government has backtracked on its decision to promote these academiesin fact there has been no clear policy of the various governments for such academies for a long time they were paid a meagre amount of rs 10 per day for each player then it was raised to rs 20 and rs 30 per day when pargat singh took baton of the punjab director sports he raised the sum to rs 60 per day while the government decided to hike it to rs 120when district sports officer satpal singh was asked why the academies were not giving the promised diet charges he replied i took charge recently and will look into the matter