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Max launches India branch of ThinkFirst
Ministerial staff’s strike hits depts' functioning
Mixed response to govt order on working women
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State fails to set up ayush gram; Ayurveda Dept’s image dented
UKD chief blames BJP, Cong for poor response to bandh
Quake resistance housing norms being flouted
Folic acid tablets for students
Civilians being given jobs by UPNL: Morcha
Face of the week
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Max launches India branch of ThinkFirst
Dehradun, January 12 Max Institute of Neurosciences, Dehradun (MIND), in association with Neurotrauma Society of India also organised Uttarakhand state’s first polytrauma conference on the occasion. The two-day event incorporates many talks, seminars and discussions about various aspects of polytrauma management and head fractures by some renowned speakers of the industry. Polytrauma refers to a condition of a person who has been subjected to multiple traumatic injuries. Speaking on the occasion, Ajay Bakshi, CEO, Max Healthcare, said: “At Max Healthcare, our vision has been to maintain and deliver the highest standard of medical and service excellence to all our patients. This association with ThinkFirst is a step towards achieving our vision by bringing polytrauma care services to the residents of Dehradun and neighbouring cities. We realise and understand the significance of expert medical supervision required in polytrauma cases and feel proud to be chosen as the Indian Chapter of this renowned organisation, ThinkFirst. I extend my heartiest congratulations to the entire staff and management at Max, Dehradun.” AK Singh, Director, MIND, and Senior Consultant and Head, Neurosurgery, said: “It is an honour to partner with a renowned organisation like ThinkFirst as it's Indian chapter. ThinkFirst National Injury Prevention Foundation has been actively enlightening people to reduce the risk of injury by educating them about the preventive aspects, and now Max Super Speciality Hospital, Dehradun, will carry forward its objectives in India. MIND has been dynamically working towards ensuring world class services to neuro patients and this association with ThinkFirst will allow doctors and staff to be in sync with worldwide technologies deployed for head injuries.” Anurag Krishna, Clinical Director, Max Healthcare, said: “Max Super Speciality Hospital, Dehradun, is committed to provide super specialised medical services to the residents of Dehradun and adjoining areas of Uttarakhand. Now with a comprehensive polytrauma care service at the hospital and alliance of ThinkFirst, specialists from different fields shall treat injured patients in a co-ordinated manner to provide international standard care in time. These doctors will be equipped with latest technological tools for dealing with head/brain injuries. With tertiary-level medical services offered at the hospital, patients shall no longer need to travel long distances to metro cities to avail of these services.” |
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Ministerial staff’s strike hits depts' functioning
Dehradun, January 12 Further, the strike by Auxilliary Nurses and Midwives (ANMs) has also affected the immunisation programme in the state. In the periphery of Dehradun, pharmacists are carrying out vaccinations, while in some areas there have been reports of break in the vaccination cycle. Amid all this, the rigid posturing by employees who want nothing less than the fulfilment of their three-point charter of demands has caste doubts on the possibility of a breakthrough. The government has already issued orders for the enforcement of no-work no-pay rule, which means that the employees would be marked absent on the days that they have been on strike. On the other hand, the government, while maintaining that it was keen to solve the matter amicably, has outrightly rejected the demand for pay parity. "The staffing pattern of Uttar Pradesh is very different from Uttarakhand. Therefore, implementation of pay parity is not possible. But in order to satisfy the employees, we have deputed an official to go to Uttar Pradesh for studying the pattern," said a senior official. |
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Mixed response to govt order on working women
Mussoorie, January 12 The state government had issued a directive to commercial establishments and firms to make arrangement for dropping women workers who work after 6 pm at the expense of the firm in which they were enrolled. The government has also done registration of women employees in such establishments to ascertain their number and ensure better safety. However, not all women are happy with the decisions and are of the view that such directives, instead of assisting them, would gag them further. Social activist and ward member from Doodhli Jasvir Kaur, while showing her unhappiness over the directive issued by the government, said the freedom of women should not be curtailed by placing them at the receiving end just because violence was perpetrated by men. She further said if the government feared men so much, then instead of making life difficult for working women, they should pass strictures against men leaving their house after 6 pm and impose fine amounting to Rs 500. This would act as a deterrent, she said. Jasvir Kaur was also of the view that it was important to change the mindset of people by creating awareness and sense of equality among men from early age. She opined that the women working in the police had to work till late hours. “So should they also stop working due to fear of the violence perpetrated by men?” said Jasvir Kaur. She said the only solution to mitigate violence against women was to change the mentality of society. She said co-education system should be introduced in schools and colleges so that both men and women could understand each other better. She also said the women were treated as product and not human beings and with coeducation such perception would be removed from society. On the other hand, Rajni Godiyal and Pushpa Padyar, schoolteachers in Mussoorie, supporting the directives of the state government on ensuring the safety of women, said the companies should take the responsibility of the working women in their institution if they take their services after 6 pm. Suman Panwar, a social worker from Mussoorie, was of the view that introducing stricter laws for the crime against women was the real answer to the problem and other commercial entities should take the onus of ensuring their safety. They were of the view that women had to face continuous harassment at public places and the responsibility of the firms of dropping the working women should be fixed on commercial establishment to ensure their safety.
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State fails to set up ayush gram; Ayurveda Dept’s image dented
Dehradun, January 12 According to sources, the private partner, Emami Private Limited, with which the Government of Uttarakhand had signed an agreement in 2010, after depositing an initial amount of Rs 2.5 crore, is contemplating exiting from the project. “So much time has been wasted urging the district administration to provide us with land, road, water and electricity but there has been no action. We have lost all hope. The government has failed to honour it’s part of the agreement,” said a senior official from Emami. Expectations were high after the Uttarakhand government roped the West Bengal-based private company Emami Private Limited for setting up the first of it’s kind ayush gram project. Despite the backing of former Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, the project became mired in one controversy after another, including a writ petition. However, despite being at the receiving end, the private company continued to press the government to provide it with the basic infrastructure so that it could roll the project, but to no avail. “The project has caste a shadow on the government’s functioning. After all the company was invited by the government to set up the project and can easily go to the court for dishonouring the agreement,” said an official from the Department of Ayush. The concept of ayush gram revolves around setting up a hospital providing the facilities of ayush, i.e. ayurveda, yoga, unani, siddha and homoeopathy. A herbal garden which would be set up in around 1,000-1,200 sq metre area will also have a specialised research centre to focus on the local herbs and medicinal plants. Similar ayush grams at an investment of Rs 650 crore were to come up at other districts of the state. In addition to this, the Department of Ayush had even identified a chunk of land in Champawat, Pithoragarh and even Rishikesh (Dehradun), but these could not get forest and environmental clearances. |
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UKD chief blames BJP, Cong for poor response to bandh
Dehradun, January 12 Panwar blamed the BJP and the Congress for attacking their supporters and injuring party activists during protests recently. He cautioned the trader community saying that a beginning was made by them by attacking the party members, which would be taken to logical end. Head of the women wing Promila Rawat blamed the media. She also said the traders, who expressed solidarity on their issues, turned rebellious and refused to close the shops on Thursday. On the issue of sorting things out with the anguished party MLA and state minister Preetam Singh Panwar, it became embarrassing for Trivender Singh Panwar to say that he had asked party vice-president OP Uniyal to prepare a report on this issue to decide, but Uniyal expressed his sentiments while openly criticising the minister for venting ire against party president in public. Panwar bought time on the issue of holding election of party president which was due since last month. He said he would hold a yajna in Gairsain on January 14 while his party leaders would do it in Deen Dyal Park on the same day to pray to the Almighty to bless the state government with some good sense. Besides this, for five days from January 20, he would campaign from Banbasa to Terai to spread awareness among people of the Terai region on the issue of permanent residence.
Yajna time
Trivender Singh Panwar said he would hold a yajna in Gairsain on January 14 while his party leaders would do it at Deen Dyal Park the same day to pray to God to bless the state government with some good sense. |
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Quake resistance housing norms being flouted
Pithoragarh, January 12 “Earthquakes are frequently occurring in the district. We witnessed five earthquake jolts last year in Dharchula alone, which were measured at 3.5 on the Richter scale,” said District Magistrate CMS Bisht, presiding over a meeting of the Disaster Management Authority in the district. Bisht said despite being a highly sensitive area in terms of earthquake, the border town of Dharchula has new houses in violation of the earthquake norms of construction. “Though we are ensuring earthquake norms in construction of government buildings, we have failed to persuade the private house owners to construct their houses according to these norms,” said the District Magistrate. “Out of 5,400 houses being constructed in the district every year, many are equipped with earthquake prevention techniques. This safety requires only 15 per cent of the total cost of house construction,” said the DM. The disaster management authority has opined that the disaster-prone areas, especially those affected from landslides every year, be identified before the monsoon so that preventive measures could be adopted. “We have also decided to make sure that the highly disaster prone villages of Jhekla, Ratigar, Baram and Hararia and Jimia be given priority in the construction of retaining walls and other protective measures that are essential to prevent landslides during rains,” said the DM. |
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Folic acid tablets for students
Dehradun, January 12 Health Minister Surinder Singh Negi said that a day in a week would be earmarked for providing folic acid tablets to school students, while those students who did not attend schools would be delivered medicines through the anganwari centres. The minister was speaking today at a workshop and launch of weekly iron folic acid supplement programme organised by Directorate General, Health and Family Welfare. The minister said that the programme would be run in all the government aided and semi-aided schools and students from classes 6 to 12 would be given the iron supplements. DG, Health, RK Pant, said that prior to the implementation of the programme, 12,000 teachers and 18,000 anganwari workers hah been provided training.
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Civilians being given jobs by UPNL: Morcha
Dehradun, January 12 Addressing a press conference in Dehradun, morcha president Raghunath Singh Negi said 6,249 of the totalf 13,459 persons employed by the UPNL as on October 12, 2012, at various state government departments were civilians, which was against the rules of UPNL. “These posts should have been filled with ex-servicemen but the UPNL gave these posts to civilians, thus depriving ex-servicemen and their dependents of jobs,” he said. He said the state government departments that prominently have civilians through the UPNL included Uttarakhand Power Corporation Limited (901), Uttarakhand Jal Vidhyut Nigam Limited (367), the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan Uttarakhand (1,385) and the State Treasury (660). Negi said it was strange that injustice was being meted out to ex-servicemen-predominant Uttarakhand. “Rather than giving honour to these ex-servicemen who have spent considerable part of their youth defending the nation, we are even taking away their jobs,” he said.
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Face of the week
Dehradun, January 12 After completing his masters in botany in 2004, Gajendra initially joined Wildlife Institute of India as a research scholar. In the very beginning of his research career in the year 2004-05, inspired by senior WII scientist GS Rawat, he trekked the entire alpine region of the western Himalayas (Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir), covering almost 3000 km on foot, resulting in publication of an update on the status of alpine meadows, particularly for the state of Uttarakhand. This update considerably helped in assessing the availability of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (MAPs) in the alpine region. Gajendra continued with research work in the Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary from 2005-2009 that earned him a Ph.D degree in botany from Kumaon University, Nainital, entitled “Diversity of vascular plants in some parts of Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary (Western Himalaya)s,” which involved the assessment of forest availability, utilisation pattern by the local people and anthropogenic pressure in the region from 1000-4000 metres elevation. During 2009-2011 Gajendra, now Dr Gajendra Singh, assessed the status of banj oak forests and their conservation status in Uttarakhand. It involved the actual banj oak forests available and their distribution across various districts. During the survey, more than 20,000 km area was covered and 200 banj oak forest patches were sampled in various districts of Uttarakhand. In the past eight years of his scientific carrier, Gajendra has broadly worked on the current status of forests, their utilisation and management in the Himalayan region with special emphasis on livestock grazing in alpine meadows, exploitation for medicinal and aromatic plants, tourism and conservation with the help of local communities as well as management authorities. Till date, Gajendra has contributed 16 scientific research papers, 4 project reports and provided technical help to two master students for dissertation. “My current research interest include valuation of ecosystem services of Himalayan region and work on the restoration ecology with the help of local communities as well as management authorities,” Gajendra Singh pointed out. Referring to his goal in life, Gajendra observes: “Changes are inevitable but the main aim of my life is to let the Himalayas retain their charm and beauty as long as they can, along with the social uplift of the people residing in their shadow.” |
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If the government feared men so much, then instead of making life difficult for working women, they should pass strictures against men leaving their house after 6 pm and impose a fine of Rs 500 on them.
The companies should take the responsibility of the women working in their institution if they take their services after 6 pm. The companies should ensure their safety on their premisies and
outside. 
The introduction of stricter laws for crimes against women is the real answer to the problem. Commercial entities should take the onus of ensuring the safety of the women workers in their
institutions. 
Born in remote Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand on November 6, 1983, Gajendra Singh’s love for nature was quite evident, being brought up in the laps of the majestic Himalayas. “Seeing these snow-covered peaks since childhood has encouraged me to devote my research on the unique vegetation structure as well as socio-economic aspects of the people living here,” says Gajendra.