As the Punjab Youth Festival 2012 has entered into its third stage, the events in the Tehsil level will formally start from today (Saturday) throughout the province. According to Chief Organiser of the Event Deputy Speaker Rana Mashhood Ahmed Khan, the first two phases of the festival which were the Neighbourhood and Village phase and the Union Council level witnessed record participation of people throughout the province.
The neighbourhood and village level marked the start of the Festival on August 26 and continued till September 6. Despite several odds there was healthy participation in the events from day one and though the entire activity is based on the development of youth people of all walks of life and ages showed interest in different categories. In this opening level there was participation of nearly 1.5 million people which in itself broke the world record of any event of this kind. In this level nine events were conducted in two sectors and 55200 sports and youth Development councils took part in different events.
The second stage which is the Union Council level began from September 8 and 30 events were lined up for competitions that included sports and general category and was held among five sectors. In this level of competitions more than 500,000 youngsters from 3464 Union Councils took part. Here the involvement of education sector and families provided a different colour and competitiveness to the events.
The third phase of the Festival, the Tehsil level will run till September 28. In this Tehsil level nine sectors would be involved in 91 events, informed Usman Anwar, Director General Sports Board and Youth Affairs Punjab.
“There are two general public sectors which are individual and family with competitions slated for individual category include naat khani, qirat, cooking, horticulture, painting, photography, poetry, milli naghme and pets competition while the family events are cooking, family dressing, healthy baby, kitchen gardening and photography,” he maintained.
“The sports sector includes competitions for secondary schools (boys and girls) and general public. The boys will compete in 11 events including arm wrestling (three categories), athletics (eight categories), badminton, basketball, chess, cricket (hard ball), football, hockey, table tennis, tug of war and volleyball and the girls have seven common events with boys and their eighth event includes karate (three categories).
“The general public sports have 19 events – arm wrestling (three categories), athletics (eight categories), badminton, billiard, cricket tape ball, tug or war, volleyball, bodybuilding, (three categories), football, fun race (2.5 km), weightlifting, basketball, chess, cricket hard ball, hockey, kabaddi, mat wrestling (three categories), mud wrestling (three categories) and table tennis,” he informed.
Giving details of the education sector, Usman Anwar said it has four sectors, elementary and secondary with girls and boys having separate competitions. “The elementary level debate, essay writing, milli naghme, naat khani, painting and qirat events to compete while the secondary sector would compete in debate, essay writing, handicraft, milli naghme, naat khani, painting, qirat and science modelling while apart from the above events, girl students of the secondary schools will also gave competition of cooking, cultural modeling and dress show.” He further informed that the rural sector has also been added in this level that have bull race, bull cart race, donkey cart race, horse race, dog race, tippling / pigeon flying, best agriculture produce and best livestock.
