About 80 percent of the shops and establishments in the state now use Telugu in their signboards, according to the labour department. After the labour department’s direction to this effect, 1,53,602 shops and establishments, out of the total 1,70,272 in the state have put their name boards in Telugu.
Official Language Commission chairman Mandali Buddha Prasad and labour commissioner B Ramanjaneyulu told reporters on Wednesday that only nine percent of the shops gave preference to English in their signboards. The majority of them are located in Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada and Tirupati. The last date for shops to use Telugu prominently in sign boards is Uagadi (Thursday).
After the deadline, the labour department will inspect each and every shop and remove the boards which are not in Telugu and the expenditure to remove the boards would be collected from the respective shops, Ramanjaneyulu said. The department will also seek the help of local bodies to cancel the trade licence of the erring shops, he said.
Adilabad and Guntur topped in shops with Telugu name boards. Out of the 7,535 shops in Adilabad, 7,514 have the boards in Telugu and 10,772 out of the 10,860 shops in Guntur district implemented the directive, he said.
“We have no objection if the shops use any other language after displaying their shop name prominently in Telugu,” Buddha Prasad said.
Buddha Prasad who visited Kuwait recently said, the local Telugus displayed all their signboards in Telugu apart from Arabic. “There is no law for display of boards in Telugu in Kuwait. But, the Telugus did it there as they love their language. The people of the state too should follow the same and use Telugu in name boards,” Buddha Prasad said.