Jalandhar, September 8
As many as 1,350 students studying in the district under the National Child Labour Project (NCLP) have been without their stipends for the past three years and their teachers sans salaries for the past 14 months.

As things stand at the moment, neither the centre nor the district administration seem to keen to rescue the degenerating National Child Labour Project from the crisis it is presently faced with.

While staff says students are yet to get stipends of three years, NCLP director says only one year stipend is pending and the disbursal of that has started.

Started across Punjab over a decade ago, the NCLP project was started with much enthusiasm, but the eagerness of the administration, both to curb the menace and to register more and more students into schools to avail the benefits of the noble project, seem to be on the wane.

While the food given under the mid-day meal scheme and the mandatory stipend of Rs 150 per student per month were two of the prominent factors to lure labour students to the NCLP schools, with the lack of stipends, the morale of students under the project is said to be at an all-time low.

To top it, teachers at the schools also haven’t received their wages for the past 14 months.

After a series of requests and protests lodged with the district administration, the salaries of six months (January to June 2013) arrived about 15 days ago. But they are yet to receive those from July 2013 to August 2014. (In total, about 135 employees work at the 27 NCLP schools in the district. While teachers get Rs 4,000, clerks are paid Rs 3,000 and class IV employees working at the schools are paid Rs 2,000.)

While sick of non-payment of dues, some of the school teachers have also started day jobs in private schools. Teachers complain that now they are being instructed to be at their respective schools at 2.30 pm. Even the official school timings are from 3 pm to 6 pm.

School view

Two of the NCLP schools running in urban areas (Garha and Basti Sheikh) have been shifted to rural areas in the district, Jamsher and Sabowal villages, respectively. Meanwhile, people true to the cause of eradicating child labour say a number of new schools in the district are needed, given the prevalence of child labour.

An NCLP staff member said, “Due to the high prevalence of child labour, schools are needed in the Leather Complex area and in the area ahead of the Basti Bawa Khel. While there are two schools within a 100m area at Basti Danishamndan – in Lasuri Mohalla and Katra Mohalla; in Basti Sheikh as well there are three schools within a 1 km span – Chitta School, Model House and another school. In many of the Basti areas and other areas with high prevalence of industry, there are no NCLP schools even though child labour thrives.”

Another person said his efforts to enlist as many as 42 child labourers working at a farm in Wariana were reduced to a naught since the NCLP staff said they couldn’t enlist agricultural farm labour. Other areas like industrial area, Qazi Mandi etc. also don’t have any NCLP schools so far.

Directorspeak

NCLP, project director, Jalandhar, Inderjit Singh, said, “While the tenure of the NCLP project was originally till September 30, 2014, as passed by the UPA government, in a recently convened meeting which I attended, the BJP government has also given the go-ahead for the project. At the meeting convened by the joint secretary of the Ministry of Labour, Government of India, we have been asked to continue with the project after September 30. Meanwhile, we have also been assured that the pending salary money of the teachers shall be arriving soon.”

Stipends: The stipends for only the year 2013-14 were pending and funds to the tune of over Rs 18 lakh for them have been received. The process for the disbursal of funds is on.

Inclusion of more students: The ministry is yet to issue directions about that. We can only open new schools or enlist more students after future guidelines. 

Jalandhar, September 8
Taking cognisance of a news-report published in Jalandhar Tribune on September 1 regarding the plight of a filling station staff, the Regional Employees Provident Fund Office (EPFO) has tightened the noose around petrol pump owners in the district.

The department is now on the look-out for the filling stations that have hired more than 20 employees and are not complying with the EPFO’s rules and regulations.

“It is a cognisable offence under the Employees Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952, and attracts penalty and prosecution. We are in the process of identifying both the dealers and the company owned filling stations who are not contributing to the EPF scheme. The violators will be dealt with strictly,” said Dheeraj Gupta, Regional Provident Fund Commissioner, Jalandhar. He also said that recently, a filling station in the Urban Estate phase 1 had been caught for not not adhering to the guidelines of the EPF Act.

The Tribune, in its recent report, had highlighted the plight of hundreds of filling station staff members who do not even have a life insurance cover, Employees State Insurance Scheme (ESI) or a provident fund option even after working for decades for the company. While most of the oil companies in India boast of spending millions of rupees in the name of corporate social responsibility by running various welfare schemes for the downtrodden, ironically, they seem to have forgotten the welfare of their own frontline force, the staff at their dealer-run filling stations.

Saumitra Pandey, deputy general manager, Retail Sales, Indian Oil, said that since the company did not have a direct control over their dealer’s staff, it could not force them to comply with all the mandatory guidelines. “We can advise them and if they do not follow the rules, they face legal action by the enforcement agencies,” said Pandey.

He also said that shortly, the company wasa going to launch an insurance scheme for these frontline staff members who are the faces of their company. 

Jalandhar, September 8
Despite clear-cut orders of the city police to install close circuit television cameras (CCTVs) at parking lots, no one has paid heed to the police orders.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Naveen Singla had issued these orders in July. The motive behind issuing the orders was to prevent the misuse of parking lots for parking stolen vehicles or prevent incident of thefts at parking lots.

During a survey conducted by Jalandhar Tribune, it came to fore that none of the parking lots had installed CCTV cameras. Despite the violation, the city police has also not taken any legal action against those running these parking lots.

Under the orders, the DCP had directed the parking lot owners that apart from installing the CCTV cameras, they should keep the recording for 45 days and submit it to the police after every 15 days. The orders also carried instructions that good-quality cameras should be installed to capture clear pictures of the person parking a vehicle.

The orders also stated that the parking lot owner should keep a register in which details of a person parking the vehicle should be recorded. If any person did not turn up for more than two days to take his vehicle, the parking lot owner should inform the police. — TNS

Jalandhar, September 8
Computer teachers across the state have boycotted clerical and non teaching work owing to the government’s reluctance to agree to their long pending demands. Owing to the decision by the teachers, staff and principals across schools are facing a lot of inconvenience.

The computer Teachers Joint Front has given time until September 20 to the government to implement their long pending demands, failing which they will convert their ongoing protest to fast unto death. Computer Teachers Union and Vocational Computer Masters Association Punjab formed a joint panel on September 2 - which aired its joint demands to the state government. But teachers today said with the government’s reluctance to pay heed to their needs, they are forced to intensify their agitation.

Union leaders – district committee president pawan Sharma, vice president Sushil Kumar among others, said they shall be proceeding to a fast unto death if their demands are not met before September 20.

The key demands being aired by the union for the past nine years include – removal of excessive burden of clerical burden from them, regularization of computer teachers and bring brought under the education department.

Computer teachers rued for long that their services were primarily being used to get through postal and computer related work at schools which was taking a toll in computer studies as well. They lamented that they were being asked to do clerical work; postal clearance, all computer related and paperwork at schools sue to lack of adequate clerical staff.

They demanded that they be freed of their extra responsibilities and until the government responds to their demands they will continue with the boycott of all clerical and non-teaching work. More than 7,000 computer teachers have boycotted clerical work and under the same protest campaign, they shall also submit demand letters to headmasters and district education officers in the coming days.

Jalandhar, September 8
Members of the Kendri Punjabi Lekhak Sabha have lauded the decision of the government to teach six vocational courses in Punjabi.

President Dr Labh Singh and general secretary Dr Karamjit Singh in a statement released today said the move of the National Skill Development Agency to get the English books for the courses translated into Punjabi and uploaded on the internet for students was highly appreciable. They noted that as many as five thousand students had already got admissions in these courses.

The president and general secretary of the sabha reiterated the demand that all technology and science related courses should also be available in the Punjabi language in the state for students to comfortably study in.

They said the government in the state should form a literary and cultural policy as per which Punjabi should be made the functional language for every government and non-governmental department.

Jalandhar, September 8
It has been a rare privilege for a student of Lovely Professional University, who has had a chance of not just attending the high-end technological summits organised by Google abroad but has also got an opportunity to meet the company's founder and CEO Larry Page.

The achievement is certainly big as the BTech (computer science) student Avinash Mishra hails from a humble background of Muzzafarpur in Bihar. The boy had earlier attended Google I/O conference in San Francisco, USA, and has now just returned after attending Google Community Asia Summit at Colombo. The conferences had sessions for web technologies such as Android, Chrome OS, Google APIs, Google Web Toolkit and App Engine.

Son of a retired Honorary Lieutenant from the Army, Mishra shared, "I can never forget those moments when I was conversing with the God of Technology, standing just next to him and Senior Vice President of the company Sunder Pichai and getting myself clicked with them. I had only read their success stories and seen their pictures in computer books. Even during the summit, only three students could meet and talk to Page. He discussed various Google-oriented projects with us. I had never imagined that one day I will get such a big opportunity to stand with a man having a personal wealth estimated to be US$32.3 billion and ranked as number 19 on the Forbes list of billionaires."

Prior to his selection for the San Francisco conference, he had competed for different technological competitions at the university level. Mishra said at the summit, the Jalandhar Google developer group constituted at the LPU had been adjudged among the top three groups of India. "I had recently endeavoured to kick-start the first Google Developers Group Women of North India at my campus," he said. He will be returning to the campus on Saturday.

Mishra said he had a few web development projects by some of his clients which he wanted to work on before opting for MTech, which he said he might start after a year's gap. "I am already spending 10 to 12 hours on these projects," he said. Director Public Relations of LPU Aman Mittal has congratulated Mishra for his achievements. 

Jalandhar, September 8
Terming the attitude of the Power Corp and Municipal Corporation as lethargic in dealing with the problems of dangling and bare electricity wire in the city, residents demanded that both the organisations must immediately step up to provide urgent solution. They asserted that since the problem is serious, urgent attention should be paid to the issue. Residents said they have still not able to forget the death of a photojournalist of a vernacular daily newspaper, Akhilesh, who died in 2012.

Residents also recalled certain past incidents in which people has fallen prey to these loose electricity cables. They asserted that problem of loose and bare cables is not only existed in few localities, infact, the whole city is surrounded with the visible threat of electrical cables. They also asserted that whenever they complained to the Power Corp officials about the issue of dangling cables, official hardly paid heed to the issue.

Yesterday also, high tension wires on the GT road had fallen due the heavy rain, which affected the supply of electricity to thousands of residents. Power Corp struggled for hours to restore the supply. Jalandhar Tribune talked to cross section of people about what they feel about the problem and what solution they can suggest for the same.

A Power Corp official is of the view that under grounding of these wires is the only solution but that process is very costly and Power Corp, cannot afford to do the same. He revealed that under grounding of wires costs almost three times more than over head wires therefore they refrain from adopting this technique.

Electricity cables should be underground

"Until and unless, Power Corp would not underground these dangling wires, the threat will continue to revolve over the city residents. Whenever city witnessed any rain or gust of air, these electricity cables fall down. Many a times, residents of certain localities had a miraculous escape after these wires fallen on their rooftops. If the Power Corp department cannot afford to shift these cables underground, then state government, for the sake of public at large or to save the precious lives of city residents, must contribute. It is a serious issue and if Power Corp and state government continue to dilly dallying the work of undergrounding of these cables, they should get ready to bear the blame of mishaps due to electrocution," said Hira Singh, private employee.

Priority should be to rectify faults in schools

"Althou\gh the whole city is facing the threat of dangling and jumbled wires, but Power Corp should pay extra heed to get rid of schools from such threat. School children are not mature so they are more prone to the risk of electrocution. I have seen certain government schools where electricity boards are lying open and classes are surrounded with bare electricity cables. Although no serious mishap of electrocution has been reported so far in the district, but power department must pay urgent heed to sort out the issue," said Harpreet Kaur, a student.

Transformers should be installed at higher level

"I have seen so many power transformers which have been installed near the ground level and such transformers are giving open invitation to the mishaps. Transformers at near DC office, Madan Floor Mill chowk, Rainak Bazar and Phagwara Gate have been installed at low level near the ground. Shockingly, some vendors in Rainak Bazar and Phagwara Gate have also set up their permanent vends beneath these transformers hence imperiling their lives. I have been noticing this practice for the past several years, but neither the Power Corp nor any other authority came forward for the issue," said Amandeep Kaur, housewife.

MLAs should intervene to sort out the issue

"Jalandhar city has four MLAs and residents should unite and presurise them to sort out the issue. To get rid of these dangling wires, residents should form a special committee which can further initiate talks with the MLAs, who can finally take the issue at the door of chief minister or deputy chief minister Punjab. One such positive step can save the lives of thousands from the risk of electrocution," said Gaurav Sama , a businessman.

Issue of high tension wires is difficult to solve

"I am also concerned with the issue of high tension wires in certain localities in the city including New Gurunanak Pura West, Gurunanak Pura East, Surya Enclave, Bashirpura, Bharat Nagar etc, but it is wrong to completely blame Power Corp for the mess. It is a fact that high tension wires were installed in these above localities a years ago, and after that residents had built their houses there. Considering the seriousness of the issue, shifting of these high tension wires to some other isolated places is, otherwise, a need of the hour," said Amarjit, a commission agent.

Residents need to be vigilant

"It is quite clear that due to the shortage of funds with the Power Corp, it is not possible to permanently solve the problems of dangling cables or lay them underground. Everytime residents went to apprise the officials of Power Corp about the bare wires or high tension wires; they always gave excuse of shortage of funds. I feel, instead of relying on the Power Corp to sort out the issues, residents should remain vigilant and save themselves from the jumbled wires,' said Sukhdev Singh, a farmer.