PESHAWAR: The Pakistan Council of World Religions (PCWR) has called upon the government to declare August 11 a public holiday, saying that non-Muslim citizens of the country will celebrate the day as `national minority day`.

Haroon Sarab Diyal, a founder member of PCWR, told Dawn on Sunday that every year August 11 was celebrated as national minority day at government level, but people belonging to different religions were not given the opportunity to participate in those events.

`This year we have decided to celebrate the day at pubic level to provide an opportunity to people belonging to differentsectionsofthe societyincluding studentsand employees of private and government departments to participate in those events,` he said.

Mr Diyal said that government should declare the day as public holiday so that every member of the minority groups could participate in the functions, to be held on that day. He said that Muslims would also be invited to the main event to be held at Jinnah Park.

He said that non-Muslim Pakistanis wanted to continue playing effective role for welfare of the country.

The government should announce public holiday on August 11 and also allow non-Muslims to participate in the celebrations of August 14 as they were also citizens of the country and wanted to take part in the celebration of Independence Day.

`A large number of people belonging minority groups perform duty as sanitary workers and they can participate in the events if government declares the day as a public holiday,` said Mr Diyal.

He also demanded of the provincial government to allow them hold the main event of minority day at Jinnah Park and provide security to them avert any untoward incident on the occasion.

Mr Diyal said that people belonging to minority groups also took part in the nation building activities but they were unknown.

The non-Muslims wanted to remember such people on certain occasions, he added.

Ravi Kumar, a recently nominated provincial government coordinator for minorities, told Dawn that he would discuss the matter with Chief Minister Pervez Khattak.

`We know that till now the national minority day is celebrated only at Aiwan-e-Sadr (Presidency) where people from different groups come and speak about their problems but no practical step is taken to resolve the same, he said.

Mr Kumar said that minorities always preferred to celebrate Independence Day on their own and would continue it. Celebrating both the days with a short interval, he said, would become difficult and priority would be given to August 14.