LAHORE, April 18: Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi has said that the government is determined to solve social problems and encourage and patronize all services in the social sector.

He was speaking at the mass marriage ceremony of 120 poor couples attended by 6,000 guests at the Fortress Stadium here on Sunday. Punjab Governor Lt-Gen Khalid Maqbul hosted the ceremony, which was attended among others by Population Welfare Minister Nasim Lodhi, Adviser on Children's Rights Dr Fiaza Asghar and a number of philanthropists.

The chief minister said that poverty was a major obstacle in the marriage of poor boys and girls. He said that the parents unable to marry off their daughters due to poverty spent every single day worrying about their future.

Lauding the substantial support provided by philanthropists for collective marriages, he said that the people of Pakistan had the strength to solve each others problems in an organized manner.

The governor observed that marriage was an integral part of our religion and civilization. However, some people lacked the resources to marry off their children. It was an obligation of the Islamic government to allocate resources for sharing the woes of such people and exhort the rich to come to their rescue.

Expressing his pleasure over the government-philanthropist collaboration for arranging marriages of the orphaned girls and those whose poor parents had more than one daughters, the governor said that as many as 447 girls had been married off in six mass marriage ceremonies in Lahore, Gujranwala, Rawalpindi and Faisalabad following the first such ceremony at the Governor's House on Jan 18.

He said that 125 couples would enter into wedlock in Lahore and another 100 in Gujranwala in collective marriage ceremonies during the next two months. Marriages of 50 couples each would be arranged in Muzaffargarh, Jhelum and Layyah districts during the next few months.

Philanthropists Sheikh Abid Husain, Malik Riaz Husain, Aqeel Karim Daddy, Abdul Aleem Khan, Farrukh Nawaz Chughtai, Haji Muhammad Shah Afridi, Sheikh Muhammad Yousaf, Haji Muhammad Nawaz and a number of industrialists from Faisalabad funded dowry and ornaments worth Rs50,000 for every couple.