Daily Times,  January 01,2011

LAHORE: To put an end to the 150-year-old lingual discrimination and exploitation of more than 100 million people of Punjab, the Punjab Assembly should pass a law with a name “Punjabi language act”, defining it as the medium of instruction of education as well as the sole official and judicial language of the province.

Punjabi Language Movement (PLM) Convener Nazeer Kahut made this demand while addressing a press conference at the Lahore Press Club on Friday.

Regretting the ignorance of Punjabi rulers towards their mother tongue, Kahut said that Punjab was the only place in the world where education in mother tongue had been banned by the state. “This is a crime against our mother tongue,” he said, adding that it would not be tolerated any more.

Kahut said that the Punjabi speaking areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that included Dera Ismail Khan, Tank and Hazara should be merged in Punjab. Feudalism in south Punjab should be abolished, he added.

The PLM’s other demands included: adaption of Punjabi as official language of the House of the Punjab Assembly, appointment of senior Punjabi writers and intellectuals as members in board of directors of the Punjab Institute for Language and Culture (PILAC), establishment of a Punjabi university, a Punjabi language authority and Punjabi academy of letters, computerised national identity cards issued by NADRA should contain details in Punjabi, allocation of the 10 percent of the province’s GDP for development of Punjabi language, education and culture, and provision of Punjabi language teaching staff and faculties to educational institutions in the province. It also demanded that the state-run TV channel PTV and Radio Pakistan should start Punjabi language TV channels and FM radio stations. staff report