LAHORE: The tourism department and archaeology directorate under the World Bank-funded Punjab Tourism for Economic Growth Project (PTEGP) selected students from four universities of Lahore to work as interns on various heritage places.

An orientation session regarding this internship programme was held at Iqbal Museum (Javed Manzil) on Monday. Secretary Tourism Ehsan Bhutta was the chief guest in the session.

As many as 108 students have been selected from LUMS,Beaconhouse National University (BNU), Punjab University and GC University.

Various monuments in Lahore havebeen assignedtothese students to work on in groups. The students will make documentaries on these monuments. The students from the media studies will make video clips for marketing whereas information technology students will handle the social media pages of these sites to let people know about them. The arts students will do 3-D scanning of archaeological sites. At the end of this internship programme, the interns would submit their reports to their teachers and subsequently get marks on their performance.The project will give a stipend of Rs30,000 each to the participants as well.

Speaking at the orientation session, Mr Bhutta lauded the archaeology directorate and the PTEGP for involving young students from universities.

`These students will become our ambassadors to promote and uplift the heritage of Punjab,` he said.

Mr Bhutta said the young generationneededtolearnimportance,history, culture and heritage closely and this programme would provide them with an opportunity to go there physically and experience the kind of work that had been done hundreds of years ago.