PREMIER AWARDS BEST CALLIGRAPHISTS

Ulaanbaatar, /MONTSAME/ Prime Minister S.Batbold presented Wednesday awards to winners of the state competition “Best Mongolian Calligraphist-2009”.
MONTSAME News Agency's Khumuun Bichig weekly newspaper, published in traditional Mongolian script, has successfully organized the 13th state competition that was attended by 1,000 calligraphists from Ulaanbaatar and 21 provinces.
At the award ceremony held in the headquarters of MONTSAME, the Premier Batbold announced that the government made a decision to grant scholarships to four more winners, school-leaving students, for studying in university in next academic year.
Traditionally, the government covers only four winners-students' tuition fee. Now, this number has increased to eight. The competition has run in categories "professional teacher", "students of 1-10th grades", "adults" and "students of 11th grade".
The Prime Minister congratulated the winners and all participants and said that history and culture are the most valuable things for any nation. Traditional Mongolian script passed on from our descendants is a precious heritage. "We have to preserve and popularize the Mongolian script in the world to advertise Mongolian national heritages," he said.
At the event, MONTSAME Director-General T.Baasansuren informed of its staffs' donation of one-day salary to herders experiencing harsh winter. “MONTSAME is the member of Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies. The agency wants to organize a regular session of Executive Council of OANA in Mongolia in 2011,” Baasansuren said. Then, he requested an assistance and support from the government to organize this special session in Mongolia.
Over 50-years of stagnation of the use of Mongol script, Khumuun Bichig newspaper started to be published 18 years ago. Since inception of the weekly newspaper, it has released about 720 issues distributing 2.5 million pieces of newspapers to readers to popularize national traditional script.
The state competition was sponsored by Tim International Company which is the authorized representative of DELONGHI, a major European electric appliance manufacturer based in Treviso, Italy. This company sponsored the contests for the fourth year.
S.Batbayar