J A L A N D H A R

Unsafe building houses PWD wing
Infrastructure blues add to staff’s miseries
Nawanshahr, June 29
The office of PWD (B&R), which issues building safety certificates to others, is itself housed in an unsafe building. And it’s not a secret anymore. Anyone visiting the office can see big cracks all over the office walls.

Accident Case
SSP urged to take action against ‘errant’ cops
Nawanshahr, June 29
Narrating the alleged negative role played by certain policemen in a road accident case, Human Empowerment League of Punjab (HELP) general secretary Parvinder Kitna, in a communication to the Nawanshahr SSP has urged him to take stern action against the errant policemen.

City Plaza for Phagwara soon 
Phagwara, June 29
Punjab government has sanctioned two new schemes for Phagwara. Talking to newsmen, here on Thursday evening, Phagwara SDM-cum-Improvement Trust administrator Amarjit Pal revealed that the state government has approved a ‘City Plaza’ on 1.73-acre plot on national highway near Mehtan village. The other project, ‘South Avenue’ would come up on Khotra road.

Two commit suicide
Hoshiarpur, June 29
Avtar Singh (30) of Gujjar Katrala (Mukerian) committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree near hi s house on Thursday.

Electrocution death
Phillaur, June 29
Two persons were killed and one sustained injuries in two different incidents near here on Thursday. In the first mishap, Channi of Flywala was electrocuted to death, when he was ironing clothes. 

Professional courses knock out humanities, science
Jalandhar, June 29
Is it a death knell for humanities?. Well, if admission trends this season are any indicator, the future doesn’t looks bright for arts and science streams. There are hardly any takers for these subjects, which have been completely overshadowed by scores of professional courses being offered by various colleges and institutes in the city.

Unsafe building houses PWD wing
Infrastructure blues add to staff’s miseries
Parmod Bharti

Nawanshahr, June 29
The office of PWD (B&R), which issues building safety certificates to others, is itself housed in an unsafe building. And it’s not a secret anymore. Anyone visiting the office can see big cracks all over the office walls.

Besides, there is allegedly no proper provision of drainage of rain water and during monsoons, the office is often flooded with rain water.

Infrastructure blues does not here for the local provincial division office of PWD (B&R) department. In addition to the cracked walls, the office is plagued with acute shortage of staff. The PWD (B&R) office has been functioning 
without regular executive engineer. The Hoshiarpur Executive Engineer has been given the additional charge of Nawanshahr.

Also posts of a SDO provincial sub division, five junior engineers, two senior assistants, five junior assistants, two draftsmen, two junior draftsmen and a steno-typist are lying vacant.

And this acute staff shortage has not only hit the field development works but also the routine office work like issuance of NOCs, clearing of assessment cases, approving maps, payment of bills of advertisements published in various newspapers, petrol pumps etc. have been lying pending for the past many months. Various government departments, municipal councils and the general public are forced to cope up with the inconvenience.The matter has been brought into the notice of the deputy commissioner, who in turn, has written many DO letters to the higher authorities but nothing has been done in this regard. Local MLA, Jatinder Singh Kariha, has also raised the question in Punjab Assembly.

Discrimination

Besides, the local PWD (B&R) office has been deprived of the proportionate share in the allotment of construction and maintenance work of the link roads in the district. As per norms, the work pertaining to link roads is allotted in 60:40 ratio between Punjab Mandi Board and PWD (B&R).

But, in Nawanshahr district, PWD (B&R) is not allotted any work pertaining to link roads. In fact, the provincial division PWD (B&R) office was shifted from Nawanshahr in 1988. Since then, the work pertaining to link roads are being allotted to Punjab Mandi Board. Though, the office of PWD (B&R) provincial division was shifted back to Nawanshahr in 1999 again but it is yet to get its due allotment of link road construction work.

Accident Case
SSP urged to take action against ‘errant’ cops

Nawanshahr, June 29
Narrating the alleged negative role played by certain policemen in a road accident case, Human Empowerment League of Punjab (HELP) general secretary Parvinder Kitna, in a communication to the Nawanshahr SSP has urged him to take stern action against the errant policemen.

Kitna said an accident took place between a Maruti car (HP-14-5580) and a WagonR (CH-03-8017) at about 9 pm on the Chandigarh road here on Monday. There was no loss of life but there was damage to both cars. The Maruti car owner was reportedly at fault.

As per a settlement, the owner of the Maruti car agreed to pay Rs 3,000 to the owner of the WagonR as compensation. Meanwhile, two policemen riding on a motor cycle (PB-32-E-4589) reached there. Soon an ASI and some other policemen also reached there. They started threatening both the parties of registering a case and taking the vehicles to the police station.

The policemen allegedly “struck” a deal with the Maruti car owner. The policemen started “humiliating” the WagonR owner and at last asked the Maruti car owner to pay Rs 1,500 to the latter instead of Rs 3,000, which the Maruti car owner had already agreed to pay as compensation.

The owner of the WagonR refused to accept the money. The policemen allegedly kept the money with them and let the Maruti car go, said Parvinder Kitna, adding that the WagonR belonged to SBI officer M.K. Handu, presently posted at Chandigarh. His father, wife and daughter were travelling in the vehicle. — OC 

City Plaza for Phagwara soon 
Tribune News Service

Phagwara, June 29
Punjab government has sanctioned two new schemes for Phagwara. Talking to newsmen, here on Thursday evening, Phagwara SDM-cum-Improvement Trust administrator Amarjit Pal revealed that the state government has approved a ‘City Plaza’ on 1.73-acre plot on national highway near Mehtan village. The other project, ‘South Avenue’ would come up on Khotra road.

The officer further said, for the first time 'flat culture' would be introduced in the town to facilitate the middle-income group.

“The Improvement Trust has handed over the building plans of existing schemes pertaining to Hargobind Nagar, Babbar Akali Market and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar to Phagwara Nagar Council, which will now be responsible for sanctioning of building maps,” added Pal. He claimed that Phagwara Improvement Trust has been adjudged best in the category. “The trust has a deposit of Rs 9 crore in the bank,” he said. 

Two commit suicide
Our Correspondent

Hoshiarpur, June 29
Avtar Singh (30) of Gujjar Katrala (Mukerian) committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree near hi s house on Thursday.

According to family members, Singh went outside the house during night and killed himself. His body was spotted hanging from a tree by his family on Friday morning. In a separate incident, Kuldip Singh (40) of Haidrowal village committed suicide by jumping before a DMU near Nasrala on Hoshiarpur-Jalandhar rail section on Friday morning. According to the sources, deceased 
was mentally upset.

Meanwhile, a road mishap claimed life of a scooterist Bhupinder Singh. The Nangal Kalan resident died on the spot when a Safari Jeep (PB-12R-1313) hit his vehicler near Nangal gate on Mahilpur-Phagwara road. In another incident, six persons, three men and three women were seriously injured when a private bus collided head-on with a truck (HR-55B-2938) near village Rajdhan (Tanda) on Friday morning. All the injured were admitted to the Tanda hospital from where they were referred to Hoshiarpur civil hospital. A road accident also left two motorcyclists, identified as Rajwinder and Paramvir Singh, injured today. Their bike wa shit by a jeep near a petrol pump at Kotan Fatuhi. The injured victims were admitted to Doaba Hospital from where they were referred to Jalandhar hospital. Their condition is said to be critical.

Electrocution death

Phillaur, June 29
Two persons were killed and one sustained injuries in two different incidents near here on Thursday. In the first mishap, Channi of Flywala was electrocuted to death, when he was ironing clothes. In another incident, Channo was killed and her husband Shammi of village mianwal received serious injuries when their motorcycle met with an accident with speeding Scorpio on the Phillaur road. — OC 

Professional courses knock out humanities, science
Deepkamal Kaur
Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 29
Is it a death knell for humanities?. Well, if admission trends this season are any indicator, the future doesn’t looks bright for arts and science streams. There are hardly any takers for these subjects, which have been completely overshadowed by scores of professional courses being offered by various colleges and institutes in the city.

Long queues of aspirants, trying for a seat in B.Com (professional), BSc (biotechnology), BSc (bio-informatics), BSc (computer sciences), Bachelor in Design, Bachelor in Multimedia Technology, Bachelor in Applied Arts, BCA, BBA and other such courses, clearly spell out the preference of youths.

The competition is fierce even between two-closely related undergraduate courses. For example B.Com (professional) is being preferred over BCom (regular). There are more applicants for BCA than BBA. Further, BSc (computer science) is preferred over BCA, owing to its better placement record. Manohar Singh, HoD of computer science department, Lyallpur Khalsa College, explains, “The industry prefers taking candidates with mathematics in graduation. Since the subject is compulsory in BSc (computer science), these students have a clear-cut edge in campus interviews”.

The academicians are worried over poor response to standard courses. Says principal of Satish Sharma of DAV College: “The pure arts and science streams seem to be completely vanishing. Even as we have introduced a few add-on courses, including communicative English and food technology to encourage students, we are finding hard to fill seats.” In a stark contrast, we have a packed house in botechnology, B.Com and BCA classes, he said, adding that there was an immediate need to identify the trends and plan admission procedure accordingly.

Agrees Jasjit Singh, counselling in charge at Lyallpur Khalsa College. “Even students with 40 per cent marks in Class XII come to us seeking admission in BCA instead of BA. We tell them to go for BA since the cut off percentage for BCA is far too high, but they simply refuse to take opt for humanities,” he said. Dr Sucharita, principal of Apeejay College said students coming to the institute are very clear about their preferences. “They mostly go for professional courses”, she said.