Jalandhar, April 22
Hold your breath for the figures are astounding.The Municipal Corporation is incurring an annual loss of Rs 11.6 crore by granting complete waiver on the payment of water and sewerage bills to all families living in houses covering an area of less than five marlas.

The arrears have crossed the Rs 44-crore mark as the waiver was introduced more than four years ago.

The losses began for the MC ever since a decision to do away with metered supply and introduce the flat rate system was taken by the Punjab government.

According to facts collected from the MC office, there are 56,670 water connections, of which almost 27,000 houses are exempted because these have been constructed in an area less than five marlas.

The houses in area of five to 10 marlas are being asked to pay Rs 105 for water supply and Rs 105 for sewerage. Those in an area of 10 to 20 marlas have to pay Rs 140 each as water and sewerage charges. Metered supply is mandatory only for houses in an area of more than 20 marlas and all commercial establishments.

Besides financial losses, there are certain environment issues also that need to be looked into. Since there are flat rates for most of the houses, the consumers have become very liberal about using water. Most residents, it is often observed, use water indiscriminately while washing cars, watering lawns, etc.

There are other pressing reasons for the MC to revert to the meter system. All Centre-sponsored schemes for urban development, including Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission, have asked the local bodies to either go in for metered supply or get debarred from any further grants.

Further there are guidelines for fixing rates so that water supply and sewerage become self-sustainable.

It is learnt that the meter system was done away with as most of the meters in the city were out of order and inspectors in the department were making the most of it by settling bills with consumers. MC Commissioner Viney Bublani said the matter was under discussion at the higher level.

Amritsar, April 22
The district administration launched an awareness campaign to educate people, especially farmers not to burn residues of the wheat crop by flagging off eight vans on Earth Day here.

Deputy Commissioner K.S. Pannu said with a view to saving health of the soil these vans would go door to door to spread the message.

Every year 545 lakh tonnes of crop residue is produced but the farmers burn these remains in the field which also destroyed the organic matter present in the soil.

He said the organic matters present in the soil determined the physical and chemical properties of soil. More the organic matter more the fertility of the soil. It would naturally provide more crop yield and prosperity to the farmers, he added.

Chief Agriculture Officer Dr Parmjit Singh Sandu said the vans would educate the farmers with the help of agricultural technocrats.

Meanwhile, the Department of Botanical and Environmental Sciences of Guru Nanak Dev University held a seminar on “Conserving earth’s biodiversity” to commemorate World Earth Day. This event was organised in association with the Lok Kalyan Simiti (LKS) and various NGOs of the city.

Saplings of neem were planted by Prof G.S. Virk, Prof Avinash Nagpal, Prof Renu Bhardwaj, Dr Amarjit Singh Soodan, Rajinder Kaur, B.P. Singh, M.S. Bhatti and Dr Rajbir Singh and the students of the department.

Tarn Taran: A function was organised at Sri Guru Arjun Dev Government Girls Secondary School here in connection with World Earth Day in which teachers and students participated.

Speakers stressed on growing more plants and trees to balance the environment which had suffered a lot due to mass cutting of trees.

Assistant Education Officer Harpal Singh read out the message of DEO (S) D.K. Mahia appealing the students to plant trees.

Uniforms were distributed among 200 students on the occasion.

Hoshiarpur, April 22
Stone pelting by agitating students of ITI, Hoshiarpur, on the police forced the latter to resort to a mild lathicharge to disperse them at Prabhat Chowk here this afternoon.

None of the students or police men was wounded during the stone pelting or the lathicharge.

According to police sources, hundreds of students of ITI, led by vice-president of the Punjab ITI Students Union, Hoshiarpur, Sukhwinder Singh, staged a dharna and blocked traffic for about half an hour at 1 pm to protest against the district administration for not providing financial assistance of Rs 50,000 to the parents of student Jagtar Singh, son of Jagdev Singh of Punj Garain village, who was wounded in a road accident when the bus of a private transport company (PB-09E-8905) hit his motorcycle. He, along with his cousin Jaswinder Singh of the same village and Devinder Singh of Dhugga village, was going towards Jalandhar when the motorcycle was hit near the ITI on the Hoshiarpur-Jalandhar road on April 20.

The duty doctor at the Civil Hospital declared Jaswinder Singh brought dead, whereas Devinder Singh was discharged after providing first aid. Jagtar, who was critically wounded, was later referred to the DMC where he is undergoing treatment.

After the accident, students had held an agitation and on the assurance from the police that it would get financial help to the parents of Jagtar Singh, they had suspended the agitation.

Today Jagdev Singh (Jagtar’s father) went to the ITI and approached students and apprised them of his poor economic condition and sought some financial aid from them. Students collected Rs 10,000 and gave the same to him for the treatment of Jagtar.

Later, students, led by Sukhwinder Singh, went in a procession to Prabhat Chowk and staged demonstration against the police and the district administration. They also blocked traffic.

Tarn Taran, April 22
A large number of farmers blocked road traffic on the Tarn Taran-Patti road, near Kairon village, 20 km from here, today to protest against weighing of excess wheat by a commission agent of a farmer in the Kairon grain market.

Kisan Sangharsh Committee (KSC) senior vice-president Sawinder Singh Chutala said that Karaj Singh, a farmer of Kairon village, brought his about 100 quintals of wheat to sell in the mandi. He said during the weighing of wheat, the farmer observed some foul play and took up the matter with the commission agent.

The farmer called his associate farmers on the spot. The farmers demanded re-weighing of the produce in the open.

In the presence of farmer leaders and officials of the Mandi Board, about five quintals of excess wheat was weighed by the commission agent.

District Mandi Officer Sukhwinder Singh Khehra, along with other officials, reached the spot and assured the farmers that a criminal case would be registered against the agent.

After this assurance the farmers lifted their dharna.

Batala, April 22
The police has failed to take any action against Rahul Sharma and his accomplices who allegedly attacked and injured Vimal Sekhri (48) and his son Vasu (22) with sharp-edged weapons in a street fight here on April 18. The injured were admitted in the Civil Hospital but the doctors referred them to Amritsar the next day. The father-son duo were admitted in Apex Hospital.

Anil Sekhri, elder brother of Vimal Sekhri, said here today that Vasu’s condition was still critical and he would remain in the ICU. However, Vimal Sekhri had been brought out of ICU.

City police station SHO Tejinder Singh said the injured were not fit to make any statement and as such no case had been registered so far. The police had not made any arrest in this case, he said. 

Nawanshahr, April 22
The issue of membership renewal of the local unit of the Punjab and Chandigarh College Teachers Union (PCCTU) has run into a controversy.

Three lecturers of RK Arya College, V.P. Singh, Satwinder Singh and Manish Manik, accusing the office-bearers of violating clause 12(a) of the PCCTU constitution, have sent a representation to the state president and general secretary of the PCCTU along with a bank draft for the remittance of membership fee, requesting them to grant them “direct membership” of the union.

“We were members of the PCCTU till 2008 and were present at the meeting which was held to reconstitute the unit for 2009 and even put signatures on the papers circulated at the meeting, but when the final membership forms were sent to the general secretary for renewal of the membership, the president/secretary forget to add our names and get our signatures,” rued the lecturers. They termed the decision to deprive them of membership as autocratic.

“Not only the local unit of the PCCTU has deprived them of the membership, executive member of the PCCTU T.S. Virli has also misbehaved with him on the phone over the issue of a written representation sent by them for seeking direct membership,” alleged Manish Manik.

However, Virli denied the allegation. “I have just informed Manik that there was no provision of granting direct membership and the affected lecturers should move their application to the local unit and send a copy to the state unit,” said Virli.

Renu Kara, general secretary of the local unit, while denying the allegations being levelled by the lectures, said they had not been the members of the PCCTU since last year as they had not got their membership renewed at that time.

“Besides reluctant in depositing the membership fee, they have been involved in anti-union activities,” alleged Renu.

However, the lecturers said they had been supporting the aims and objectives of the PCCTU and had never been involved in any anti-union activity. Besides, they had not received any intimation regarding their expulsion from the PCCTU.

Gurdaspur, April 22
Murphy’s Law states that when things get bad, they tend to get worse. This axiom fits in to near perfection at the local bus stand which is a perennial picture of chaos and confusion, leaving passengers fuming over the apathy of officials in providing them better facilities.

Lack of drinking water, absence of cycle and scooter stands (leave alone a car parking lot) and wrong parking of buses has only added to the woes of commuters. The premises, which has been rented out to a contractor by the Zila Parishad, is cramped 
for space and people 
who have to board buses have a harrowing time doing so.

Says contractor Dinesh Kumar, who tries to manage the everyday chaos at the bus stand, “I have written so many times to the Zila Parishad to make arrangements for proper drinking water. However, all my petitions have fallen on deaf ears. I have to bear the brunt of the people’s anger. Everyday harried commuters flock to me and complain but I cannot do much as it is for the Zila Parishad to provide proper facilities.”

The Transport Department has provided just one sub-depot to the town. The Punjab Roadways has a depot at Batala, 34 km from here, and matters relating to the running of state transport buses are managed from there.

However, officials manning the sub-depot Manager’s office at the bus stand refer these agitated and stressed commuters to Batala if they have to register a complaint. A government schoolteacher, preferring anonymity, says, “We really have a torrid time boarding a bus for Dinanagar. There is a rush of students going to Dinaganar because there are so many educational institutions there. However, when we come to the bus stand in the morning we see buses being parked in a haphazard manner. That means that we have to waste a lot of time in locating the buses meant for our destination.”

Over 500 buses come to the bus stand daily and all have to find their way carefully past other buses. Dinesh Kumar said the wrong parking of buses at different counters, not meant for them, only made matters worse.

Sources reveal that the space in the bus stand could be utilised in a better way, provided at least 20-odd shopkeepers, who have their shops adjacent to the bus stand, demolish their structures. The Zila Parishad has relocated their shops inside the bus stand but, citing a court case, the shopkeepers refuse to move into the premises.

Former Chairman of the Improvement Trust Neeraj Salhotra admits, “Drinking water is the main problem. In summers it gets bad and then worse. Bus stands in cities like Amritsar, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Patiala have been given a modern look. Why should Gurdaspur lag behind?”