Afghanistan Times
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AT-KABUL: The Academy of Golden Reed Prize marked Saturday the International Book Day, donating cash prizes to a numbers of poets and writers for their scientific works.
Najib Manalai, an organizer of the ceremony told reporters that there were a lot of challenges ahead of writers, hampering scientific works.
He termed publication restrictions and lack of government support as the main challenges for authors and poets.
“Unfortunately, there are fewer libraries and the writers cannot complete research on the important issues,” Manalai said.
He remarked that however the reading culture had decreased due to security issues, but still there was interest for writing books.
“Increasing bookstores in different parts of Kabul reflects the fact that despite a lot of economic and insecurity challenges, people are still keen of book,” he mentioned.
The Golden Reed Prize Academy appreciated Sayed Shah Saroor, Aria Hafiz, Tahir Zaland, Yasin Negah, Atan Kawa and Mustafa Hazara for writing contemporary scientific books in Pashto and Dari languages.
Meanwhile, culture minister Abdul Bari Jahani, called the culture of reading “very low among the youth”.
“Ministry of culture has allocated about 2.5 million Afghanis to establish libraries across the country,” Jahani said. “We also asked the government to provide lands to build a national library.”
It is pertaining to mention that the World Book Day was celebrated for the first time on 23 April, 1995 in the United Kingdom.
