PESHAWAR, Jan 23: Various literary organizations have criticized the provincial government’s decision to adopt Urdu as the official language and termed it disappointing for the millions of Pashto-speaking people of the province.

In a joint statement issued here on Wednesday by Salim Raz, chairman Pashto World Conference, Dr Fazal Din Khattak, president Pukhtana Leekwal and Asif Ali Khan, president Pushtoon Cultural Society, deplored that the successive governments had been ignoring the Pashto language.

The government decision, the statement said, had increased the fears of the millions of Pashto-speaking people. The Pashto language had been put on the back-burner by the people at the helm of affairs, the statement said and added that an step-motherly treatment had been meted out to the rich Pashto literature as far as the education system was concerned.

The children of Pakhtoon people were not receiving education in Pashto language in schools in complete violation of rules, which stressed education of mother tongue to the students.

It also alleged that the electronic media was systematically depriving the Pashto language of its status as the main language of the province and due time was not being allocated to the Pashto programmes on radio and television.

The statement said that if the province of Sindh could adopt Sindhi as official language of the province, why Pashto could not be adopted as the official language of the NWFP. It demanded of the government to adopt Pashto as medium of instruction in the Frontier province.