Bathinda, July 26
A lot of hope was generated two months ago in the water-borne disease stricken Malwa belt when the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) chief Sukhbir Singh Badal announced here that within three months safe drinking water would run in the taps of every household, but the expectation has dashed to the ground with a large number of patients suffering from hepatitis, typhoid and jaundice reporting in the government hospitals and private clinics these days.

The situation was worst in the villages around the main town where contaminated canal water was the main source for quenching thirst.

However, the authorities and the health set-up were insensitive to the burning problem of the common masses in the Malwa region where people drink tap water with a sense of scare.

As many as 42 cases of typhoid have been reported in the district hospital alone during the past few days. As many as 12 cases of jaundice were detected last month in the Baba Jeet Singh Nagar.

More than 18 persons suffering from hepatitis-A have been detected in the Podipura village near here, health officials said.

Among the worst affected localities in the town across the railway line where incidents of jaundice and typhoid have been reported are, Paras Ram Nagar, Parshuram Nagar, Partap Nagar and Jogi Nagar. These diseases are not confined to the localities across the railway line, but have also been reported in the posh localities of Model Town, Civil Lines, Patel Nagar and Kamla Nehru colony.

Dr. Kasturi Lal, district health officer, claimed that the situation was not alarming and the disease has not taken epidemic shape.

He said that the drinking water supply was potable, but it was getting contaminated due to leakages in the pipes that criss-cross through drains in the town.

During a visit to the water treatment plants near Rose Garden and Model Town, this correspondent witnessed unhygienic conditions around the main reservoirs.

It is worth mentioning that the centre was concerned about the water quality of particularly the Malwa belt. The union minister for water resources, Saifuddin Soz, said that the quality of drinking water here was a cause for concern. The water table was fast depleting in Punjab where farmers were resorting to drawing ground water and were depending on it heavily.

Recent tests conducted following increase in the number of cancer patients in the areas around here have indicated presence of harmful mercury, metals and chemicals in drinking water.

Presence of 13 harmful chemicals was reported in blood samples of people dependant particularly on ground water.

Residents of the Faridkot and Abohar town were scared of drinking tap water as it was highly contaminated. A large number of fish were recently found dead in the canal that is the main source of drinking water to these towns.

Bathinda, July 26
Crossing a lot of political and economic hurdles, the work on the much-hyped project of the state, the Guru Gobind Singh Refinery Ltd., has now restarted. Giving details of the ongoing developments of the project, senior officers at the refinery site informed that the civil, mechanical and electric works had been restarted.

During a visit to the refinery site, the TNS team today observed a range of works in progress.

The officers said the construction of water reservoir, township, power plant, crude oil tanks, 66-KV electricity line, power sub-stations, roads and buildings was going on, adding that steel plates had arrived and for the erection of infrastructure, foundation work was on.

They further said machines and other components had been ordered, which would be assembled here.

As many as 12 contractors are working on the project — three in electricity wing, two in mechanical and seven in civil jobs. The three major companies, according to the officials, were BHEL for power, Petron for civil and L&T for crude oil distillation towers. The contract for the 140-acre water reservoir has been allotted to the VRC.

Besides the land measuring 2000 acres for the refinery, around 150 acres has been purchased to arrange for the accommodation of as many 1000 employees. The township project has been awarded to the Walaiti Ram Mittal Construction Company.

According to the officers, with the plantation of 1.75 lakh saplings, the green belt project has already been completed. The 50-cusec capacity canal for the water requirements of the refinery has been laid on 12 km, which would emerge from Bangi head of Kotla branch.

It has been informed that the pipeline for the transportation of crude oil would be 1000-km long, starting from Mundra in Gujarat. Designs have been approved and land has been acquired for the same. The pipeline too has been ordered. Further, the right of use (ROU) and the right of way (ROW) has also been approved.

The Rs 18000-crore worth GGSRL, having a capacity of 9 million metric tonne per annum, would tentatively be completed by December 2010. In the refinery, the HPCL and Lakshmi Narayan Mittal’s company have a share of 49 per cent each while two per cent would be held by financial institutions.

With the frequent movement of trucks and labour, the residents of Malwa have been seeing a new light of hope, as it is expected that the project would generate nearly 20000 jobs, directly or indirectly.

Bathinda, July 26
Several contests, including essay and caption writing and painting, were organised at the Kendriya Vidyalaya No. 1, Bathinda Cantonment, to mark the week-long Van Mahotsava/Environment Week celebrations, which concluded on Saturday.

Aimed at creating awareness about the significance of pollution-free environment and how to protect ecology among students, the celebrations based on the theme of ‘Save Earth, Save Mankind’ began with tree plantation.

Chief guest, Colonel Amit Rao, 27 AD, planted the first sapling. The principal of the school T.D. Garg, teachers and students followed him.

Speaking on the occasion, the chief guest urged the students to take steps for preserving and conserving environment by helping in reducing pollution.

Various competitions like essay writing (Hindi and English) on the topic ‘Save Earth, Save Mankind’ and slogan writing were held.

A drawing and painting competition for the students of primary wing was also organised and students also tried their hands at caption contest. Prizes were given to the winners of the contests.

Barnala, July 26
Keeping in view of demand of area residents, the Punjabi University, Patiala, has given affiliation to one more college in the city.

Giving this information, Sanathan Dharam Sabha's general secretary, Shiv Darshan Kumar Sharma, said that the Punjabi University has given permission to the SD Sabha to run BA degree on regular basis vide his letter no. 9217, dated July 24.

He further said that presently, there are 30 seats for the BA part 1 students and 30 seats for the PGDCA program. The session 2008-2009 would run at the campus of the Sanathan Dharm Sabha Senior Secondary School, Barnala. From the next year, these classes would be shifted to the new campus at the Sanghera byepass, which is under construction now, he added.

Expressing gratitude towards the university authorities, advocate Shiv Darshan Kumar Sharma said that this affiliation would benefit a lot to city residents as the already existing colleges in the district were not enough to meet the required demands of the students. 

Moga, July 26
The district planning board of Moga that met here on Friday, after a gap of over ten months, has released a sum of Rs 2.15 crore for various development works.

The board also expressed concern over the attitude of some departments, which had failed to deposit utilisation certificates (UC's) with the authorities concerned about the works completed by them during the past two years.

The chairman of the board, transport minister Master Mohan Lal, and district magistrate Satwant Singh Johal revealed that a sum of Rs 1.67 crore had been released under the integrated child development scheme for providing supplementary nutritional diet to children, pregnant and lactating women. As many as 1,398 urban and 40,884 rural beneficiaries would be covered under this scheme in the district.

Under the Kishori Shakti Yojana, a sum of Rs 9.50 lakh has been released for providing supplementary nutritional diet to 1,776 teenage girls in the age group of 11 to 18 years.

Apart from this, Rs 4 lakh has been granted for giving old-age pension to as many as 2,000 deserving persons and Rs 2.90 lakh is allocated for providing financial aid to 29 poor widows.

A sum of Rs 2.01 lakh has been released as grant-in-aid in form of a subsidy to the BPL families and Rs 29.61 lakh for financial aid to the poor families under the Indira Awas Yojana.

The chairman, while addressing the members of the board, said that they should come prepared with the list of their demands and suggestions to the planning board. He asked the authorities concerned to circulate the agenda of the board meeting at least one week in advance to all members so that they could study and discuss on the issues properly.

Member jathedar Tota Singh revealed that most of the village road projects could not be cleared under the Pradhan Mantri Sadak Yojana because the minimum requirement of five yards of space was not being made available for the construction of roads.

He demanded from the district administration to ensure acquisition of this minimum requirement of width so that all pending cases of road construction could be cleared and the work could be started on them at the earliest.

Taking a dig at the lacklustre attitude of officials of various departments, district magistrate Satwant Singh Johal said that more than 90 per cent of the UC's of the works done during the past two years had not been deposited before the authorities concerned, which had become a big hurdle in further release of the funds.

As per the details available, the UC's of works done by spending an amount of Rs 15.82 crore were still pending in various departments. It had also come out in the meeting that as many as 63 objections were raised in audit reports of various departments that had not been removed so far.

The DM warned district-level officials of all departments to do their work honestly and deposit their UC's in time, otherwise, departmental action would be initiated against them as per the rules.

The district magistrate was also surprised to know that heads of many departments like irrigation, canal, electricity board etc. were not present in the meeting and said that the attendance of all departments would be ensured from the next meeting onwards. 

Fazilka, July 26
Ravinder Luthra, chairman, coordination committee, Paramedical and Health Employees, Punjab, along with Shashi Kant, president, Punjab State Pharmacists' Association, Ferozepur district, in a joint statement here issued on Friday said that Satish Chandra, principal secretary, Health, has assured the paramedics to arrange their meeting with health minister Laxmi Kanta Chawla shortly to discuss their demands.

They had returned from a state-level dharna held by paramedics at Chandigarh on Thursday.

Kant and Luthra said the health secretary accompanied by senior officers of the Health Directorate accepted the demand charter of the paramedical employees and urged them not to take out the protest march to the Civil Secretariat. The protesters agreed to the appeal and cancelled the march.

They disclosed that the secretary, health, Punjab, had also issued a letter to the director, health services, Punjab, seeking report of action taken on the demands of the paramedical employees. A copy of this letter dated July 14 has been sent to Lal Singh Dhanaula, convenor of the coordination committee.

Abohar, July 26
The Bhartiya Kisan Union Ekta Ugrahan has decided to organise "Dhanyawad rally" here on August 4 to thank the farmers of the Balluana Assembly segment for successfully launching morcha against proposed acquisition of 2300 acres of agricultural land for a thermal plant in private sector.

BKU district secretary Gurmail Singh Burjan told newspersons on Friday that a meeting that was presided over by the block president Sukhmander Singh here today expressed immense pleasure on the information coming from the official circles that the state government had withdrawn the proposal. The farmers had staged dharna for more than 100 days and forced the surveyors to go back, he claimed.

The meeting expressed concern over water logging that had reportedly damaged cotton and other crops in scores of villages including Kuharianwali, Burj Hanumangarh, Alamgarh, Chanankhera, Bhangala, Bahadarkhera, Ramgarh, Gaddandob, Muradwala, Bahawalbassi, Dhaani Sucha Singh, Sardarpura, Kundal, Balluana etc.

The farmers urged the Balluana MLA Gurtej Singh to arrange a visit by the Chief Minister to have first hand account of the grim situation so that the growers could be compensated well.

The meeting criticised the irrigation authorities for discrimination in supplying canal water for irrigation and warned that a dharna and demonstration would be held against the executive engineer if the situation was not made normal.

Barnala, July 26
One person was killed while four sustained injuries in a car-bus collision at village Ghunus, about 20 km from here today. The deceased, Gurdev Singh, was on his way from Barnala to Bathinda after attending the last rites of his mother-in-law.

As per information, Gurdev Singh's Maruti car collided with Orbit bus near petrol pump at Ghunus village. The impact was strong enough to kill Gurdev on the spot. His son Gagandeep sustained serious injuries. Gurdev Singh's wife Sukhpal Kaur, younger son Bhuvandeep Singh and one another woman in the car, who was accompanying the family, sustained injuries.

After the accident, the bus driver managed to flee from the site. The villagers, who were working in the fields nearby, helped in getting the injured admitted to hospital.

SHO Tapa, Palwinder Singh, also reached the accident site. He hospitalised the injured at the civil hospital, Barnala.

Gagandeep's condition being critical was shifted to Ludhiana. 

Abohar, July 26
The Bhartiya Janta Yuva Morcha on Friday felicitated its district vice-president Shiv Raj Goyal on his election as the president of the local municipal council.

The function was organised by Ajit Singh, president of the local unit of the morcha, at Gaushala road. District vice-president Devinder Singh were among those present at the function.

Goyal said there would be no discrimination in launching development projects for different wards.