Jalandhar, August 16
Chief parliamentary secretary Avinash Chander today made a surprise visit to civil hospital here this noon and found various anomalies in the routine functioning.

Avinash Chander arrived as a common man riding pillion on a motorcycle instead of his official car bearing a beacon.

He went straight to the OPD and took a slip. At the counter, he paid Rs 10 but was not returned Rs 8 even as the amount of fee to be charged was Rs 2.

He was told that there was no change 
available.

He then went around the wards to assess the problems faced by the patients and visitors. He even interacted with patients and their attendants to know about the problems being faced by them.

The common problems which he heard included non-availability of clean drinking water to the patients and fewer rounds by the doctors.

He even inquired about the matter pertaining to fleecing of the patients who were allegedly being forced to donate money for an AC in a room there.

While Avinash Chander was still in the hospital at 1:30 pm and the official duty ends at 2 pm, he found that many doctors had left the place before time. Perhaps, they were unaware of the presence of the chief parliamentary secretary on the hospital premises.

He said since it was his first surprise visit, he would not take any action against the erring employees. He said in case the same problems reoccur after a warning, the employees could then face the music. He asked the doctors and officials to be present for a meeting to be held tomorrow at the hospital.

Jalandhar, August 16
Supergirls Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams are their guiding light. For this bunch of Police DAV School kids —- who recently participated in the International Space Satellite Design Competition, organised by NASA at Johnson Space Centre Houston —- nothing is more thrilling than space and its unexplained mysteries.

Though the 12-member delegation, including two teachers, was not able to bag the top position in the contest, they managed to leave a lasting impact on the judges with their earnest efforts. The whizkids unbared their minds and hearts and spoke at length to The Tribune about their project and meeting with their icon Sunita Williams.

The project was titled as “Bradbryom on Mars” and it involved preparing a colony model for 11,500 people on Mars. “Since the time allotted to us was just 43 hours, we had to adopt a systematic approach. The different parts of the project included structural design, operations and infrastructure, human factors, automation and design, business development, schedule and cost,” said Navdeep and Pawan. “The biggest challenge was to cut short the expenditure and still use the best possible material.

Finally, after much deliberation, we fixed the expenditure as 198 billion dollars for our project,” said the duo who looked after the structural design. While designing our emphasis was on saving the structures from extra territorial invasions existing on the planet, they added.

“Communication and transportation were another key areas. We had to provide special protective systems and space vehicles. The task was challenging, but we enjoyed it,” said Milan and Bhuvnesh, who took care of operations and infrastructure.

The reasons for migrating to Mars were cited by Sargam and Harneet. “The reasoning had to be very strong because leaving a unique planet like earth is not a feasible idea.

Humans would face many hardships while settling on Mars and we had to keep our solutions ready for each and every problem,” they said.

Saumya, Bhawan and Puneet, in charge of automation and designs said, “Our work mainly involved designing robots and ensure that there was no scope for manual work.

The challenge before us was to protect robots from dust in which we succeeded.” Shray was the one who used his mathematical calculations to reduce the cost of the project.

Meeting Sunita Willaims was a memorable experience for the entire team. “She shared with us her experiences. We were really charged up after meeting her,” said the kids.

The two teachers Navdeep Sharma and Karam Inder Singh, who accompanied the students, said the expedition helped the students explore more about space. 

Jalandhar, August 16
The Independence Day fervour gripped almost every school in Jalandhar. While students presented a cheering time with songs and dances, their mentors took on more important roles.

Eklavya School started the national festival with a march past followed by flag hoisting. Seema Handa, director of the school, presided over the function. Students of class III and IV enthralled the audience with song ‘Aao baccho tumhein dikhayen’, while the tiny tots showed their patriotism through song and dance on the numbers ‘India the beautiful’ and ‘Pray for India’. The students of middle school presented a dance on ‘Yeh desh hai veer jawanon ka’.

Innocent Hearts School celebrated the 61st Independence Day. Students of class II and VII presented national songs. A Hindi patriotic song competition was organised for classes LKG and UKG. Greesha and Kavish of LKG and Drishti and Disha of UKG bagged first positions.