KARACHI, April 5: The Sindh Governor, Dr Ishratul Ibad, has doubled the grant-in-aid of the Arts Council after a meeting with its office-bearers on Tuesday. The Arts Council’s grant-in-aid has been increased from Rs1 million to Rs2 million. Sources told Dawn that, in principle, the governor also agreed to the establishment of a cultural village on and around M.R. Kayani Road within a week. Approving a grant of Rs500,000 for the cultural village, he asked the Arts Council to immediately start holding a book bazaar on a car park next to the Burnes Garden first on a weekly basis and later on a daily basis.

They added that he also asked the Arts Council to put up illuminations around the locality, which would go a long way towards the establishment of the cultural village.

The sources said the governor approved the establishment of a pedestrian zone on M.R. Kayani Road and Maulana Deen Mohammad Wafai Road after sunset. He said the former would serve as a place where artists and sculptors would hold exhibitions and the latter would become a food street.

The Sindh governor asked members of the Arts Council’s governing body to go ahead with their plans of establishing a cooperative housing society for artists, promising that the government would do all it could to help the artists, the sources said.

He asked the Arts Council, the National Academy of Performing Arts, National Museum and other organizations to coordinate with one another and hold a variety of programmes for art lovers. He directed that Aiwan-i-Riffat be constructed on a priority basis.

The Arts Council delegation included Aniq Ahmed, Rizwan Ahmed, Talat Hussain and Saifur Rehman Grami.

Sindh Chief Secretary Aslam Sanjrani, Additional Chief Secretary (Culture) Syed Anwar Haider, Secretary Finance Israr Malik, and Executive District Officer of the city government’s community development department Iqbal Zubeidi also attended.