LAHORE: The Punjab government has decided to remove executive directors of the Lahore Arts Council (LAC) and the Punjab Council of the Arts (PCA) over the delay in submitting scrutiny committee reports of the Artists Support Fund as hundreds of non-artistes were allegedly benefitting from the fund allocated for the deserving artists.

The decision to replace LAC Executive Director Muhammad Saleem Sagar and PCA Executive Director Mehboob Alam was made art a meeting of the Artists Support Fund Committee chaired by Caretaker Minister for Information and Culture Amir Mir, sources told Dawn.

The additional secretary culture briefed the participants on the background to the fund and its disbursement mechanism amongst the needy artists of the province.

The minister showed discontentment at the delay in submission of the report of the scrutiny committee.

He observed that over the years over 2,400 artists were receiving financial support from the fund and random checking revealed that a large number of them were non-artists.

All the fake entrants who were the beneficiaries were usurping the rights of the actual artists.

The scrutiny committees constituted at LAC and the PCA were declared responsible for the misappropriation of the fund while the executive directors of both the art councils were signatories of the scrutiny lists and they failed to check the embezzlement.

The meeting was told that both the officers were given one month time to scrutinise the lists. Later, they sought one month more but even then they could not verify the authenticity of the artistes or locate the non-artistes.

The minister proposed to replace both the executive directors as they could not ensure transparency of the scrutiny.

The committee declared the current list of eligible artistes redundant by the close of the financial year and approved to issue advertisement for Artist Support Fund 2023-24 at the earliest.

It directed the Punjab Social Protection Authority (PSPA) to reverse the amounts lying in the accounts of non-withdrawal cases of previous financial year 2021¬22.

The committee meeting also approved 12 cases of financial assistance amounting to Rs850,000 under the hardship categories, excluding the name of lqbal Ahmed Rahi, the poet, who would be given financial assistance from the Punjab Writers Welfare Fund.

The committee denotified Sohail Ahmed (Azizi), renowned television and stage artiste and a member Artist Support Fund Committee, due to permanent non-attendance of meetings of the committee. The committee approved the denotification of Sohail.

It observed that the composition of the committee should have at least four members from the artists’ community, two males and two females, with one artist representing Rawalpindi (north Punjab) and one representing south Punjab. The names of artists would be finalised after consultation with the artiste associations.

The cases of the Artistes Support Fund were also discussed in the meeting which included financial assistance of Rs50,000 under medical category for artist Yaqoob Atif, popularly known as Bulbula. Another case of financial assistance, again under the medical category of Rs50,000, was approved for singer

Asad Abbas from Gujranwala. The committee approved a marriage grant of Rs100,000 for Abdul Jabar Ansari. The committee discussed the matter and observed that actor Rashid Mahmood had already been given Rs200,000 under extraordinary hardship category for his medical treatment being a heart patient. It observed that Mahmood needed more financial assistance for his treatment and unanimously approved Rs200,000 for him.

Published in Dawn, June 17th, 2023