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Evening of life |
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Civil Hospital, Kapurthala, in bad shape The Civil Hospital, Kapurthala, is ailing. There is shortage of doctors and paramedical staff. Consequently, patients have to bear the brunt of it all. The hospital has no sanctioned posts of pathologist, orthopaedician and ENT specialist.
City bus stand or dirty puddle? From Schools and Colleges
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Evening of life They have seen the varied shades of life. And they have with them years of accumulated experience in their special fields. They also have the gift of hindsight — they can look four, five and even six decades back to reflect on the past. Yet senior citizens are ignored and neglected, and they remain on the fringes of the city’s mainstream life. Often relegated to unimportant positions at home by children, senior citizens have to plough a lonely furrow. “I sometimes feel a stranger in my house. My children, who are in their 40s, are busy with their own lives. They hardly have any time for me. And my grandchildren don’t brook any word of advice. They think it’s interference. I am alone with the memories of my own young days,” says a septuagenarian, requesting anonymity. “We have become almost redundant. People around us don’t realise that we have a rich experience to share. They think that we belong to a different era that has no relevance today,” rues Mr Karam Singh, an eighty-plus man from Kala Kheda village near Jalandhar. He had served Subhash Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army in the prime of his youth. Even more heart wrenching is the plight of old parents whose children have settled abroad. As the city and its neighbouring villages have a sizeable population of NRIs, the number of such old parents waiting for their children to come back keeps swelling with each passing year. “When darkness descends, I feel the walls of the house closing in on me. There’s no one to look after me in my old age,” says an eighty-year-old woman, whose only son is settled in Canada. She adds wryly that NRIs often pump in money for constructing mortuaries in villages. “It’s only when old people like us die that our sons come back home.” But the indifference (some would term it ‘callous insensitiveness’) towards the senior citizens and their consequent loneliness is just a minor part of the problem. “Children bribing psychiatrists to declare their well-heeled father insane may sound melodramatic, but it’s true. My close relative, who is a psychiatrist, has come across many such cases,” says a senior citizen, not willing to disclose his identity. “We cannot ignore the fact that atrocities against the old people are increasing,” adds Col Tilak Raj, IPS (retd) and resident of Urban Estate, Phase II. Mr N.D. Shandilya, IIS (retd), recalls the case of a widow who had to shuttle every month between three cities, including Jalandhar, for her stay with her three sons posted at different places. Even the state has been showing laxity in framing and adopting policies related to the welfare of the senior citizens. There are hardly any medicare facilities, alleges Mr H.S. Bawa, retired Senior Superintendent of Police. “One has to wade through a tangle of bureaucratic maze even to get the due medical reimbursements,” he adds. Ageism, eulogising the virtues of youth and stereotyping the old people have made things difficult for the elderly. “We are seldom a part of ‘us’. We are invariably ‘they’. This hurts,” says a retired teacher. “Times have changed. Modernisation, rather Westernisation, has impinged on our lives,” remarks Mr H.P Sandhu, retired deputy general manager, telecom. Interestingly, Mr Sandhu’s over 100-year-old father stays with him in the same house. On the recreational front, too, there’s not much the elderly have to look forward to. The city hardly has any club that caters exclusively for the senior citizens. Even villages fare no better. The age-old practice of the elderly grouping together under shady trees is being given a short shrift, thanks to indiscriminate felling of trees and unplanned urbanisation.
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Civil Hospital, Kapurthala, in bad shape The Civil Hospital, Kapurthala, is ailing. There is shortage of doctors and paramedical staff. Consequently, patients have to bear the brunt of it all. The hospital has no sanctioned posts of pathologist, orthopaedician and ENT specialist. Though the orthopaedician and the ENT specialist are posted on deputation in the hospital, the services of the pathologist are not available. “We have to go to either the private hospitals or the government hospital at Jalandhar, which is more than 20 km away,” rued Ms Paramjit Kaur, who had come to the hospital for a check-up of her son. Even more surprising is that the emergency section is being taken care of by a single doctor only. This district-level hospital, where on an average more than sixty patients remain admitted in different wards, is working with 20 nurses on the roll. Out of 24 sanctioned posts, two are lying vacant and the nurses are sent to other hospitals on deputation. Due to shortage of paramedical staff in the hospital, only three nurses are deputed on emergency duties in a day against the required number of eight. The condition of the new building of the hospital where the office of SMO, private and general wards shifted hardly two years back is also pitiable. There is hardly any wall in the whole building not choking with water due to leakage in sanitary pipes. On the backside of this building, a fleet of condemned vehicles can be seen. This portion of the hospital looks more like a garbage dumping ground. “If the hospital does not maintain the standards of cleanliness, do you think we can repose our trust in its working?” rued a patient, on the condition of anonymity. Dr Sharanjit Singh, SMO, when contacted, said though the hospital had a shortage of staff, still the available staff was trying its utmost to provide services to the patients. He added that even after repeated complaints to the authorities concerned, the leakage in the walls of the building had not been plugged.
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Killer
stretch on Kartarpur road The killer-stretch of about five km from Bidhipur railway crossing to Kartarpur near here has swallowed more than 40 precious lives in accidents during the past over two years. These accidents also resulted in serious to mild injuries to more than 300 persons during the same period. Very recently, four members of an NRI family, along with two acquaintances, were crushed to death when their car collided with a bus near Bidhipur railway crossing on June 24. At this particular spot (30-metre stretch), seven persons have died since May 2003. Four members of a family lost their lives in May 2003, when a bus hit their car from rear side. All of them died on the spot. In November 2003, three members of a family died when their fiat car met with an accident. On June 28, a private bus bound for Amritsar turned turtle on this stretch when the driver tried to reduce the bus speed by applying breaks. While driver, identified as Amarjit Singh of Verka village in Amritsar, was killed in the mishap, over 12 passengers sustained injuries. Besides, the loss of vehicles, according to experts, has been in crores of rupees. More than 150 vehicles, including cars, jeeps, buses and trucks, have been damaged in over 70 accidents during the past two years. According to experts, the 30-metre most accident-prone stretch on the killer road is devoid of any friction and is slippery during rainy season. Whenever a driver applies break, the vehicle slips and hits the objects near it. “The condition of this road gets worse when after a long spell of scorching heat, the bitumen gets separated from the road. This makes it unfit for plying vehicles. We have submitted several complaints to the authorities concerned, but to no avail,” said Mr G.S. Kahlon, a Kartarpur-based businessman, adding that the entire five-kilometre stretch needed to be carpeted with good quality material immediately to save lives of commuters.
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Ready-made holidays’ homework While most school authorities assign holidays’ homework to students so that they utilise the whole month purposefully, some ‘smart’ students have adopted a novel way of buying ready-made charts, working and non-working models based on scientific principles. From thermocol charts of animal and plant cells to miniature telescopes and periscopes, shopkeepers in Mai Hiran Gate and Mitha Bazaar have them all. That too, for a price in the range of Rs 40 to Rs 90. The shopkeepers also have ‘experts’ who are busy working day and night these days to do the assignments that have been ‘entrusted’ to them by students. Since the holidays are about to be over and the students have to present their work in school by next week, the demand for the ready-made projects is on an all-time high. The shopkeepers have prominently displayed the charts just outside the shops to attract passers-by. They have even hung temporary signboards in front of the shops publicising about the availability of all kinds of science projects. One most frequented shop had thermocol models of amoeba, paramecium, structure of human brain, heart, excretory system, digestive system, solar cooker. The shopkeeper also had working models of telescope, kaleidoscope, solar heater and fire alarm. Interestingly, the models and charts did not have any labelling of the parts, as the shopkeeper said that this work had been left for students. Teachers could identify the handwriting of their students. Straight lines had also been marked for the labelling work very neatly for the convenience of the students. The shopkeeper said that the prices of the projects were not fixed, as it all depended on the effort and cost involved in each one of them. He said that a simple thermocol non-working model was being sold for Rs 40. Those that required lots of cutting and skill were being sold for Rs 60. Working models, he said, could cost a student somewhere to the tune of Rs 80 to Rs 100 depending on the expenditure incurred in getting the raw material, he pointed out. The students, interestingly, have their own reasons for buying these readymade projects. Ritu, a Class IX student, said that she had been away to Bangalore on a school trip for about 10 days. After that, she had gone to Dehradun to spend a week with her maternal grandparents. She said she had just begun doing homework of all subjects, including mathematics, English language and art and craft. “I don’t think I will have any time left to prepare science models. I have to get it from the market or else face punishment,” she explained.
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City bus stand or dirty puddle? The pre-monsoon showers that lashed the city for four consecutive days on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings brought some respite to city residents from the sweltering heat. But there was no end to the city residents’ woes as rainwater accumulated in almost all areas of the city, thanks to the ill preparedness of the Municipal Corporation Jalandhar (MCJ). The worst hit were bus commuters who had to face a tough time treading through knee-deep waters at the bus stand. Students, professionals and businessmen coming to the city from neighbouring districts by buses also had a harrowing experience. There was no way through which they could come out of the bus stand in case they got down at the bus terminal. Hundreds of people who had to visit district administrative complex for some work were also a harried lot. One-and-a-half-foot-deep water remained stagnant outside its main gate. Most low-lying colonies, especially in the old city areas, remained inundated. Residents of Bhagat Singh Colony even lodged a protest against the Mayor and the Municipal Commissioner. Stinking, muddy water remained stagnant in their colony for almost a whole day. Shopkeepers having their shops on Railway Road, Adda Hoshiarpur Market, Central Town, Mandi Road and Ladowali Road also had a bad time. Residents of posh colonies like Model Town, Defence Colony, Mota Singh Nagar and Guru Teg Bahadur Nagar also had to face a tough time, as the sewerage remained clogged during the first rainfall of the season. Rickshaw-pullers, however, had a fine time, as most people avoided walking down to even nearby places. Those inside the bus stand made a good income, as commuters could not get in or out of the bus stand without their help. Most of them charged as much as Rs 5 for just ferrying a passenger in and out. Mr D.P. Bhardwaj, secretary, Municipal Corporation, when contacted, said that only the SE concerned could give the correct details. Mr A.K. Prabhakar, SE (O and M), Municipal Corporation, on the other hand, could not be contacted despite repeated attempts.
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From Schools and Colleges Seth
Hukam Chand S.D Public Senior Secondary School, Kapurthala road, organised a summer camp in which students from different schools participated. Different activities like glass painting, pot making, toy making, cooking without fire, rangoli, skating, art and craft kept the students busy in the intense heat of summers. The main purpose of the camp was to develop the overall personality of the students by making them learn creative, culinary and dancing skills under the able guidance of the teachers, said Ms Manju Arora, Principal. Camp concludes: Topper: Merit list:
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