taking note of danger
Residents of Sant Avenue locality near Radhaswami Satsang Bhawan, had filed a petition before the commission in February 2008 that several people had installed X-ray machines in the residential area without taking adequate safety measures as per the guidelines of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board

Amritsar, July 5
The district administration and the Amritsar Tourism Development Board (ATDB) have a tough task ahead in providing hassle-free route for the heritage walk to tourists visiting from across the country and world.

Lacunae in shape of deplorable roads, missing footpaths, widespread encroachment, unorganised traffic, loose and unorganised dangling cables of power supply, telecom and private satellite channels, poor garbage collection, unhygienic environment and lack of cleanliness disenchant and distract tourists.

Heritage walk is expected to be launched in September.

Deputy Commissioner Rajat Aggarwal, who is also head of the Amritsar Tourism Development Board, said initially time of the walk would be 6:30 to 8:00 in the morning.

He said all these bottlenecks were already in their notice and they were chalking out plans to correct them. He said keeping in view the involvement of multi departments and deadline of September made the task a little ambitious.

He said identical problems were found in many patches and added that nodal officers would be appointed for each patch. He said signage would be installed for the information and guidance of tourists. He said traders associations, officials of various departments, including Municipal Corporation, Sewerage Board and others.

He said plan was to start garbage collection in these areas early morning.

Amritsar, July 5
In order to give a fillip to research in the medical field, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has sanctioned a grant of Rs 6 crore to Government Medical College for setting up a multi-purpose research unit.

The ICMR sanctioned the project for research purposes subject to availability of land about 3000 square feet for setting up the laboratory.

While confirming this, Principal of the medical college Dr Sukhdyal Singh Shergill pointed out that it would help in promoting research work in various departments of the medical college. He said the grant was likely to be released within three months. He said with the sanctioned amount a state-of-the-art laboratory with latest equipment such as auto analyser worth Rs 45 lakh would be procured.

“The land is available with us. Recently, the nursing college was shifted to a new building near the Guru Nanak Dev Hospital after vacating the building situated beneath the department of pharmacology,” Dr Shergill said. He said all requisite information sought by the ICMR had been submitted to the higher authorities to be forwarded to the Central government for issuing the sanctioned funds.

Amritsar, July 5
A team, headed by Dr Pardeep Singh Kahlon, District Health Officer (DHO), visited the glucose plant at Guru Nanak Dev Hospital here yesterday.

The team was constituted by Civil Surgeon Dr Avtar Singh Garewal after Deputy Commissioner Rajat Agarwal took the cognisance of the report regarding the halting of glucose production published in The Tribune. He directed the Civil Surgeon to investigate the matter.

Dr Garewal, while talking to The Tribune, revealed that during the visit Dr Kahlon found that the glucose production had been stopped owing to non-availability of seals and corks.

According to reports, the Directorate of Research and Medical Education had directed the hospital that in future it (the directorate) would procure the raw material after inviting the tenders. For time being it asked the hospital to purchase a small quantity of material. However, the Ahmedabad-based company denied entertaining small quantity of order placed by the hospital authorities, thus leading to the shortage of corks and seals.

Because of this a large number of poor patients are thus forced to buy glucose bottles costing about Rs 35-40 from medical stores situated either on the premises or in front of the hospital, which otherwise is provided free of cost in the hospital.

Dr Garewal said that DHO interacted with Medical Superintendent (MS) of the hospital Dr Karnail Singh, who assured that the plant would resume its production within a week. He said the MS claimed that the hospital had placed an order of Rs 50,000 for corks to the company, besides 1000 kg of glucose salt, which would reach by this week. Hopefully, the production would resume as soon as the corks and glucose salt reached the plant, he said. 

Amritsar, July 5
The mortuary at government-run century-old Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital is lying in utter state of neglect and no efforts is being made to keep corpses properly.

It is here that unidentified bodies and corpses of accident victims, suicides and even foreign nationals who die during their jail term are kept. Sometimes they were kept for days together.

However, in absence of ice cube chambers and cold storage which should be an essential part of the mortuary, the bodies are kept in ice and that too is arranged by the families of the victims.

Wild plants have grown around the tiny and old mortuary situated just few yards away from the residential place of the fourth class employees of the hospital.

During rainy season, water seeps into the room while the surroundings are highly unhygienic. It is situated just close to the railway lines and there are no proper security arrangements. Worse is that there is no proper streetlights on the way leading to the mortuary. It is very difficult to store more than two or three corpses in the mortuary room measuring approximately 10ft x 15ft.

If the hospital doctors are to be believed the mortuary should be fully air conditioned with proper arrangements for the storage of corpses. It should have enough space to keep 8-10 bodies at a time which is not possible at the current mortuary. There should be a technical person appointed at mortuary who could keep records of the bodies besides putting up identification tag to identify the body. However, at present a fourth class employee is looking after and performing all the duties.

The major disadvantage is that it is far away from the present postmortem house. “Ideally it should be situated close to the postmortem house so that there would no problem for transportation,” said the doctor on condition of anonymity.

At present the family has to make arrangements for shifting the body from postmortem house to mortuary till all the formalities are completed.

When the government is upgrading the Government Medical College and its associated hospitals it should allocate funds for construction of ultramodern mortuary, he opined.

Dr SS Shergill, Principal, GMC, said the college committee has approved to set up a state-of-the-art mortuary at a cost of Rs 50 lakh.

He said a project report has been sent to the Directorate of Research and Medical Education in this regard.

As soon as we get permission from the DRME and funds would be released by the government, we would start work, said Dr Shergill.

Amritsar, July 5
That the overflowing Beas inundated hundred of acres of field in neighbouring Tarn Taran was enough to have set the alarm bells ringing for the district administration and the residents living in the flood-prone areas of this district.

In all there are 44 villages under the threat of floods. Of them, 41 are located in Ajnala subdivision and three are in the Baba Bakala area of Beas subdivision. The Ravi passes in Ajnala while the Beas crosses from Baba Bakala. These villages are located back and across these rivers.

Disaster Management experts opine a slew of safety measures for the residents of these areas to minimise their losses in the case of flood-like situation.

Master trainer on Disaster Management Surjit Sharma stressed that the household safety plans for these villagers were paramount. He said the residents must remain vigilant to keep a watch on the warning issued by the district administration. He said the lowering of guard could be disastrous.

He said another step was to educate and instill confidence in people that their alertness could either avert the crisis or minimise the losses.

Sharma advised that these families must take certain steps to avoid their personal losses. He opined that they must shift their important documents like educational certificates, registries of houses, lands and other documents to safer locations like their relatives living in far-off areas and to lockers of banks located in safer zones.

He said pesticides, insecticides and other life-threatening materials must be kept in sealed bottles and containers to avoid them mixing in water during inundation. He said there was invariably a fear that these poisonous liquids blend with water which could be accidentally be consumed by people.

Another piece of his advice was that the people of these areas must be insured. He said he held many interactions with the natives of these areas but found that illiteracy, ignorance and poverty hold them back from going ahead with these policies.

He said these people must keep a bag full of clothes, first aid kit, torch, extra cells and transistor always packed for emergency use. Eatables like jaggery, gram, salt and potable water in enough quantity to last at least three days must also be kept by these families.

He said at least a member of these families must be trained to attend to snakebites. He added that cases of snakebites increase during floods as they tend to move to residential areas during swamping of the land.

He said currently the state faced the scarcity of divers and there was a need to employ more of them to swiftly carry out the emergency operations.

He stated that observance of these steps would enable these people to withstand the calamity.

Amritsar, July 5
Artists passionately presented Punjabi play “Singh Surmey”. The play was staged at Nat Place Verka here today. The play was written by Inderjit Gogoani and was performed by the artists of Nat Place.

Artistes perform play ‘A Zindagi’ at Virsa Vihar in Amritsar. Photo: Vishal Kumar

The play apart from entertaining viewers exhorted them to keep away from addiction and intoxicants.

Balwinder Kash directed the play.

Cast of the play included Dolly Saddal, Rajinder Singh, Charan Das, Master Baldev Singh, Karina, Sohrab, Major Singh, Dilraj and Varinder Singh. Vijay Pal offered the music.

Amritsar Table Tennis Association president Anudeep Singh Madaan was the chief guest who started the play by lighting the candle.

Amritsar, July 5
Sick Swarn Lata Handa, 70, and her family experienced nightmarish experience while travelling from border town of Dera Baba Nanak (Gurdaspur district) to Amritsar. She was being taken to a hospital in Amritsar.

Her son Ashwani Kumar Handa said Dera Baba Nanak-Amritsar passenger train (number 74653) kept standing at Verka railway station for nearly two hours on June 30. This despite the fact that Amritsar railway station was hardly nine km from Verka railway station yet it was not allowed to proceed ahead.

He said four trains daily travel between Dera Baba Nanak and Amritsar. He recalled that they did not have to face much inconvenience in the last winter as these trains followed their time table properly. Delay in arrival and departure of these trains had become a regular feature this time, he added.

Similar were the view of travellers who travelled between Amritsar and Delhi. A ready made dress material trader Dhiraj Kumar said that Hirakund Express was kept waiting for more than an hour at Manawala railway station, about 12 km from Amritsar Railway station on the intervening of July 2 and July 3. He said earlier on the intervening night of June 25 and June 26 the same train had been stopped for more than two hours at Manawala Railway station.

He said the professional needs required him to visit Delhi once a week. During his return journey from Delhi Hirakund Express suited him as it departed from there in the evening and arrived at Amritsar at midnight.

Thousands of traders travel between Amritsar and Delhi weekly for trade and business purposes.

Another trader Manjit Singh said trains which depart from Amritsar hardly gave any problem but arriving trains were stopped without any valid reason at small stations near Amritsar railway stations. However, delay in arrival disrupt their routine.

Northern Railway Zone’s Ferozepur Division, Divisional Railway Manager, Vishwesh Chaubey said these were general observations and did not have any authenticity. He said he observed the schedule of all trains regularly and as per his knowledge Hirakund Express followed its schedule properly last month. 

Amritsar, July 5
The Engineers’ Association of the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) termed the SAD-BJP government’s claim of turning the state into power surplus hollow as they allege that the state is not investing even a single penny to achieve the goal.

Association president H.S. Bedi said here on Saturday that majority of the states were investing 20 per cent in equity from the resources of the state government (not the generating company). He said Haryana added 1840 MW under the state sector in the last four years and Rajasthan already commissioned 1289 MW under the state sector during the last four years and was likely to add another 2360 MW with government finances in near future. He said even financially bankrupt state like Uttar Pradesh had planned to add 1500 MW under the state sector in the near future.

He said the policy of the SAD-BJP government would reduce the PSPCL’s share of power generation from present 52 per cent to 19 per cent.

Bedi said the association would soon issue a White Paper on the lopsided policy of the Punjab Government to hand over its entire future generation plants to the private sector. He alleged that the government had adopted non-transparent MoU route for handing over the power generation projects rather than through international competitive bidding.

Association general Secretary Bhupinder Singh said flayed the government for delay in granting the approval to the proposal of the PSPCL to set up 1320 MW thermal power plant near Mukerian.

He said in Punjab, the private sector was being allowed to take over the generation by eliminating the state sector participation in new projects. He claimed that it would increase the consumer tariff rapidly.

Amritsar, July 5
The domestic women labourers held a rally at Goal Bagh here on Monday and asked the government to bring the unorganised domestic labour under Minimum Wages Act besides providing them BPL cards. 

Leaders of AITUC, CITU and CTU announced that these domestic labourers would now work at monthly salary of Rs 500 for a work and would be entitled for one day off per week. They urged the state government to issue free bus passes to them.