Gold medallist’s dad rues official appathy

Ravinder Saini

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Tribune News Service

Jhajjar, March 11

Shooting sensation Manu Bhaker has given residents of Goria village the reason to cheer by clinching back-to-back gold medals in her debut World Cup in Mexico.

On the other hand, her father Ram Kishan Bhaker, a marine engineer, wants an effective mechanism at the government level which can assist players in procuring arms licence and visa in the minimum time without any hassle.

He says shooters have to make several rounds of government offices to get arms licence for sports. Like shooting, players of other games have to spend a lot of time in obtaining visa to compete in international events. If the player is minor, several formalities are fulfilled by parents.

“We had to wait for 12 days in getting appointment from the Mexican Embassy to procure visa. We had to struggle for over two months to get a pistol licence for Manu to compete in the Asian Youth Games last year. The licence was issued only after the intervention of the media, which highlighted the issue,” says Bhaker.

He maintains that the time-consuming process of getting arms licence and visa adversely affects the concentration of players as their practice time goes in getting visa.

Manu is scheduled to return to India on March 14, but will not be able to come to the village as she then has to procure visa for Australia within three days. Manu has to leave for Australia on March 18 for an international tournament, he adds.

Bhaker says Manu started pistol shooting in April 2016 at Universal Senior Secondary School in the village, where a manual shooting range has been established.