IEP Chandigarh, February 20
Punjab Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Rural Development & Panchayats and NRI Affairs Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal has ordered the officials to ensure that the entire work was to be done in Punjabi language.
Mr. Dhaliwal congratulated all Punjabis on ‘Punjabi Diwas’ (February 21) and said that the state government led by Bhagwant Mann has taken a big decision and announced to give top priority to Punjabi language on all boards across the state. He said that the state government has made it mandatory to write Punjabi language at the top of all government, private or other boards, after that any language can be written.
The cabinet minister directed the senior and district officials of the departments under his portfolio to give priority to Punjabi in writing the names of all the boards, notice boards and names of their offices, while other languages should be written after Punjabi.
The minister appealed the Punjabis that they should use Punjabi in their families to ensure existence of their mother tongue.
Mr. Dhaliwal invited the entire Punjabi community and said that Punjabi is our mother tongue and it is our moral duty to respect and give priority to the mother tongue. He said that Punjabi is spoken in 150 countries. While citing a report of UN, he said that Punjabi has got 12th place out of 7000 languages around the world. He said that it is expected that as many as 2000 languages would disappearing in the next 50 years and Punjabi is also one of them, as revealed in this report. He said that the state government will take all meaningful steps to promote the mother tongue Punjabi.
