ranchi the state government has recruited district sports officers dsos for all 24 districts for the first time since the formation of jharkhand in 2000 in a programme held at the project building here on thursday chief minister hemant soren handed over the appointment letters to the newlyappointed dsos and told the audience that his government would provide the required support to boost sporting activities in the state the dsos play a crucial role in the promotion of sports and implementation of schemes by acting as a link between the government and the districtsbut owing to the unavailability of dsos till now districtlevel sporting plans and activities were mostly looked after by other officials who often had dual chargessoren said jharkhand is famous for its mines and minerals but its time that this state becomes equally renowned for its allround sporting culture for the first time since jharkhands formation my government has filled up all the vacant posts of dsos with an aim to boost sporting culture in the statesoren added that although the pandemic halted sporting activities in the country jharkhand became the first state to resume sporting activities by hosting a t20 cricket tournamenti thank the jharkhand state cricket association for hosting the tournament when they proposed to host this meet we readily gave them permission the government is working on providing infrastructural and technical support to churn out national and internationallevel players the chief minister said adding that the new sports policy will be implemented soon after it gets the nod of the cabinethe also announced the launch of a dedicated sports portal for players and coaches before durga puja the portal will be a database of all current and past players coaches technical officials and budding players among others the information would help us to provide them support he saidnotably alleging lack of government patronage about 33 national and international players across different sporting disciplines had staged a daylong symbolic protest at morhabadi ground on tuesday and announced that they would surrender their medals before soren next weeksoren on thursday appealed to everyone to keep patience i am aware that several players are demanding direct recruitment in government jobs for many years we are working on it initially the department had shortlisted a few eligible players for jobs but we have now decided to invite more applications so that other deserving players dont miss out after this we shall explore avenues for direct placements he saidtalking about the recruitment of dsos state sports secretary puja singhal said we have assigned posting to everyone through an onspot lottery in the presence of the chief minister on thursday for greater transparency