Government urged to open Lok Virsa centres in all provinces

A parliamentary panel Friday recommended the government to open Lok Virsa centres in all the four provinces, besides increasing its budget up to Rs 500 million from the current Rs 100 million, to protect and promote culture and national languages. Due to heavy expenditures and New Delhi's supervision, Indian culture is dominating across the world while on the other side, owing to state negligence, Pakistani culture and national languages are becoming part of the history, observed the Senate Standing Committee on Less Developed Areas.
The committee met with Muhammad Usman Khan Kakar in the chair here on Friday to discuss performance of Lok Virsa National Heritage in the less developed areas and in FATA. The committee also recommended setting up an academy where students from across the country could come and learn different musical instruments. The committee recommended giving respect to actors and actresses, musicians, poets, etc, who give happiness to millions of people. The committee recommended documenting all culture-related works and languages for their promotion. The parliamentary panel sought recommendations from Lok Virsa National Heritage for preservation and promotion of different cultures and national languages of the country.
Briefing the committee, Executive Director (ED) Lok Virsa Fouzia Saeed said that Rs 75 million were allocated in the financial year 2015-16, which were raised to Rs 80 million in 2016-17; however 90 per cent of the amount is being spent on operational expenditure and a little amount is left for programmes and activities, etc. The committee termed the budget nominal for promotion of culture and languages, and recommend for increasing it to Rs 500 million.
The ED further said that recruitment on regular basis has not been carried out for the last 25 years; however, it is expected to be started very soon. Fouzia Saeed said that National Institute of Folk and Traditional Heritage (Lok Virsa) was established in the year 1974. 1t is a specialised institution dealing with research, collection, documentation, preservation and dissemination of Pakistan's traditional culture. It includes both tangible and intangible heritage.
She said over the years, Lok Virsa has made several achievements in the field of culture including establishment of two national museums, ie Heritage Museum depicting living cultural heritage of all provinces, regions and even remote and far-flung areas and Pakistan Monument Museum presenting history of Pakistan, both presented through three-dimensional creative manner, a state-of-the-art media centre and a unique reference library addressing Pakistan's traditional culture. Lok Virsa has also published a series of books on different facets of Pakistani culture.