Horse and Cattle Show in early March

By Anjum Gill

LAHORE: The National Horse and Cattle Show of 2005, featuring revised events, will be held in the first week of March at Fortress Stadium, Lahore.

The show will be synchronised with other spring festivities, Najibullah Malik, the Punjab secretary for local government, told Daily Times on Thursday. Most of the events for 2004 will be sponsored by private organisations.

The government plans to take measures to ensure that people from rural areas also participate in the show. “The idea is to showcase agriculture, livestock, handicrafts and other rural industries. People from all over Pakistan, especially Punjab are expected to participate in the event,” Mr Malik said. New programmes such as musical galas and laser shows would also be added.

“It will not be a show just for the elite. We want people from other social classes to watch the show as well,” Mr Malik said.

“We want people to be competitive and inspired by one another to increase cattle breeding and industrial production,” he said. Special arrangements would be made to better utilise marshalling areas. The government will add more educational programmes in the morning presentations for entertaining children, he said.

“Various government departments are working on the estimates for the allocation of funds,” Mr Malik said. These decisions were taken in a meeting chaired by Muhammad Basharat Raja, the Punjab minister for law and local government. The secretary for livestock and dairy development, sports, the DCO of Lahore, the director general of the PHA , the director general of the LDA, and army and rangers officials also attended.

According to a statement, representatives from various committees including the General Arrangement Committee, the Health and Sanitation Committee, the Agriculture Exhibition Committee, the Tattoo Show Committee and the Coordination Sub-Committee also attended the meeting.

Mr Raja has directed the heads of the committees to prepare budget estimates within 15 days. The minister directed that all the DCOs, nazims, naib nazims and national and provincial legislators should be invited to watch the show. It was also decided that all district governments in the province should hold mini horse and cattle shows in their respective districts with the collaboration of the livestock department. Another meeting will be held after 15 days to review the budget estimates and other arrangements.

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