LAHORE, March 29: The Inter-national Shah Husain Conference demanded that Punjabi be declared medium of instruction in the province and be linked with provision of employment.

In several sessions of the three-day moot which opened on Wednesday, papers on subjects like Sufi tradition in the subcontinent, relevance of Sufi message in the present global context, humanism in Shah Husain’s poetry, and women in Sufi poetry will be read.

A cultural show, a visit to Shah Husain’s shrine and laying of floral wreath there are also part of the programme.

Declaration of the conference will be announced at the last session to be held on Friday (March 31).

Opening the conference, World Punjabi Congress chairman Fakhar Zaman said progress had been made on the establishment of a Punjabi university in Lahore. Known educationists would serve free of cost for one year at the institute.

He said the proposed university would offer diplomas in all regional languages of Pakistan, besides Hindi.

He demanded that besides making Punjabi the medium of instruction at primary level, 10,000 holders of master degree in Punjabi language should also be provided jobs.

He told the participants that the chief minister had responded positively to their charter of demands.

Punjab Education Minister Imran Masood, who was the chief guest at the inaugural session, said the task of introducing Punjabi as medium of instruction was fairly difficult given the present resources as the government would require to employ at least 125,000 teachers at its 63,000 primary schools for the purpose. However, he pledged his all out support for the purpose.

Satia Pal from India suggested collection of Sufi literature on both sides of the divide. For the purpose, he also suggested introduction of a 50-mark paper on Gurmukhi script in Pakistani Punjab and Shahmukhi script in Indian Punjab so that the literature in both scripts could be properly explored.