Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz has formally opened the restoration of the Gymnasium and Sports Complex in Jhelum, a project worth Rs 1.195 billion, capping a day of inaugurations in the city that also delivered a new cardiac unit for its main hospital and a new home for a low-income family.
The chief minister was given a warm and enthusiastic welcome when she arrived at the gymnasium, where young players waited with posters to greet her as she walked in. Young girls sang the popular Punjabi folk song “Teriyan Reesan Kaun Kare” as she arrived, and she stopped to show them affection, exchanging high-fives and chatting with them as the players crowded around her.
She then joined in herself, playing badminton with a female player and applauding a chess player as he concentrated on his board. She signed autographs for the young girls, posed for photographs with them and spent time talking to the players about their training and what the restored complex would mean for them.
One young player presented her with an embroidered dupatta and placed a crown on her head, a gesture that drew applause from those watching. The chief minister also greeted a special athlete through sign language and asked after her well-being, a quiet moment that stood out during a visit built around young people and sport.
The restoration is the centrepiece of the visit, and it matters because Jhelum is not one of Punjab’s big cities. Young athletes in smaller cities often train with limited facilities, travelling long distances for proper courts, coaching and competition. A restored gymnasium and sports complex, rebuilt with more than a billion rupees behind it, gives them a place of their own to practise, compete and be spotted. For a city that has long sent its young people elsewhere for opportunity, keeping that talent at home is the point of the investment.
The sports complex was not the only opening of the day. At the District Headquarters Hospital, the chief minister inaugurated a cardiac catheterisation laboratory, a Cath Lab, that will allow heart patients in Jhelum to be treated in their own city instead of travelling to Rawalpindi or Islamabad. The unit, equipped with angiography, angioplasty, ECG, a modern operation theatre and ventilators, has already treated 2,400 patients. The chief minister inspected the wards, the semi-modular unit and the operation theatre, checked the quality and expiry dates of medicines and injections, watched a live angiography procedure from the control room and met patients recovering after angioplasty. She directed that patients requiring angioplasty at any hospital in Punjab should not have to wait more than 24 hours. Cardiac laboratories and centres are being set up in 25 smaller cities where such facilities were previously unavailable, so that emergency heart care no longer depends on reaching a big city in time.
From the hospital, the chief minister went to see the third strand of the day’s work. She visited Zahida Bibi at her newly constructed four-marla house in New Abadi Islam Pura, Jhelum, built with a loan under the Apni Chhat Apna Ghar scheme, and formally inaugurated the house alongside the beneficiary and her family. The chief minister described the scheme as Punjab’s largest low-cost housing project and said its impact was being recognised internationally. Around 250,000 to 275,000 homes are being constructed for low-income families under the programme, and the family she visited had previously lived in rented accommodation for 25 to 30 years.
The visit also carried the Punjab government’s wider education and transport agenda. The chief minister addressed a Honhaar Scholarship and laptop distribution ceremony at the Government Comprehensive High School in Jhelum, where she announced that the Nawaz Sharif School of Eminence in the city would open on December 15. Nearly 300 such schools are being established across Punjab, offering air-conditioned classrooms, computer laboratories, artificial intelligence laboratories, science laboratories and qualified teaching staff. Green Bus services are planned for three towns from January, and the Lilla-Jhelum Road has been completed during the current year. She also visited the Model Bazaar at Shandaar Chowk in the old Ram Din Bazaar area and was scheduled to visit Pind Dadan Khan, with e-buses, a water and sanitation scheme and beautification of the old tehsil road also on the day’s list.
Taken together, the day in Jhelum was designed to show a government delivering on several fronts at once: sport, health, housing, education and transport. The folk song at the gymnasium and the crown placed on the chief minister’s head gave the day its colour, but the substance lies in what follows. A sports complex is only as good as the coaching and competitions it hosts, a Cath Lab only as good as the staff who run it around the clock, and a housing scheme only as good as the homes that actually get built. Jhelum now has the buildings and the promises. The young players who welcomed their chief minister with a song will be watching to see whether the facilities they were promised become the place where their own sporting careers begin.
