patiala the punjab language department is facing a severe fund crunch because of which around 250 books are yet to be printed during the inaugural function of the recently concluded punjabi week here madan lal hasija director of the department had asked for rs 80 lakh to put these books in printthe demand was however not accepted by punjab chief minister amarinder singh sources said that the government had sanctioned only rs 3 lakh for organising functions related to the punjabi week the 13 writers which had been honoured with the shiromani awards were also not given any prize money the selection of awardees is yet another important issueselections are to be made by an advisory committee which interestingly is yet to be set up by the punjab government which so far has evinced little interest in this regardbook publication is among the major projects of the department books in punjabi language and punjabi books in hindi urdu and english can be found at the department on varied subjects the department has been publishing hundreds of books including world famous classic literature however of late most of the books have not been sold and are gathering dust at the department storesources claim that the market value of these books which are finding no takers is worth crores of rupees punjab education minister khushal behl had expressed his dissatisfaction over the functioning of the department and after the function a senior official had said that he was dissatisfied with the sale of bookswhen a top department official sought help to sell these books off a top bureaucrat openly wanted to know why had the books found no takers the department is also running four monthly magazines including jan sahit which is a punjabi publication even after 42 years the magazine has not been able to attract more than a thousand subscribersthe department has reportedly tried everything in the book to collect subscriptions which were discontinued after their method of collection was criticised the recent special issue of the magazine contains punjabi short stories the special issue covers seven months from october 2002 to april 2003 interestingly the magazine is a monthlythe standard of the magazine can also be easily gauged it contains short stories like ik pariwarik ate pavitar rishtabhain ate bhra da and diwali is taran vee manai ja sakdi hai