LAHORE, Dec 31: The Parks and Horticulture Authority plans to celebrate the Heritage Week from Feb 11 to 17 in a bid to revive public interest in cultural capital of the city.

The PHA has already identified seven sites — Haveli Raja Dehaan Singh, Victoria School, Masjid Wazir Khan, Barkat Ali Hall, Wazir Khan Baradari, Shahi Hamam and Kamran Baradari — for the purpose.

The week is planned to have intellectual and entertainment content; each identified site will host a lecture and musical programme for seven evenings. Prominent experts like F.S Ejazuddin and Dr. Ijaz Anwar will deliver lecture on the heritage of Lahore and singers like Iqbal Bano, Farida Khanum, Nayyra Noor and Hamid Ali Khan will entertain the audience every evening.

PHA chief Kamran Lashari said: “Havelis represent a very strong aspect of the Lahore cultural heritage. But, unfortunately, they have left in a state of oblivion; no one has tried to explore them in true cultural perspective that is strong enough to turn them into tourists’ attraction and a source of income and cultural beauty for the city. In an attempt to lift these buildings out of negligence, the PHA has chalked out the ‘heritage week’ plan. It will invite opinion makers, intelligentsia, media people and decision makers to these places every evening of the week.”

He said at present, the level of cultural awareness was not enough to open such weeks for the general public. A select gathering of opinion and decision makers could help more at this stage.

About problems to get these buildings, he said most of them were with educational institutions. The Punjab government had provided an enthusiastic support to all PHA plans for the cultural revival. But retrieval of these buildings was not an easy task. Unless these institutions were provided alternative sites, one could not take them over and use them for cultural purposes, he said.

The PHA, he claimed, was fully alive to social sensibilities when planning a new look and character for these buildings.