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Bearing the brunt in the name of development
Palampur, November 18 But the authorities have not bothered to look into whether the state highways or national highways would be able to cope with the load of the plants. Due to the increase in traffic, roads are squeezing and have made the lives of the locals and tourists a hell during the past five years. If no early efforts are made or no alternative road is proposed for the truckers, the state would witness regular traffic jams. This would happen not only on the state highways but also on the national highways. Besides, it would adversely affect the tourism industry. To regulate traffic on Bilaspur- Kiratpur highway, the Bilapsur police banned the movement of trucks in peak hours to avoid inconvenience to passengers. The situation is already alarming. At present three cement plants are functional in the state, which has made the traffic situation worst. Despite the fact that there is complete ban on overloading of trucks, still a number of trucks carry more load than prescribed limits fixed by the state transport department. They cause damage to the roads resulting in frequent accidents. Sources revealed here recently that the state PWD was worried over extensive damage being caused to national and state highways by overloaded trucks carrying cement, clinkers and other construction material. According to the sources, six more cement plants would further worsen the situation and narrow roads would be the worst victims of these plants. According to a survey conducted by a local NGO, the new plants would bring 20,000 more trucks on the roads daily in Solan, Bilaspur, Shimla, Mandi and Chamba. Three cement plants functioning in the Bilaspur and Solan districts has already aggravated the situation, as there was no check on overloading of trucks from these plants to railway stations and to retail outlets. Besides, resulting in largescale pollution, these trucks also caused heavy damage to internal link roads used to avoid sales tax barriers. The sources said over 5,000 trucks and dumpers working in Ambuja and two ACC cement plants use the national and state highways daily. Most of these trucks carry 10 to 14 ton load violating the provisions of the Motor Vehicle Act. Because of excessive use of road by these trucks, the Kiratpur-Manali and Shimla-Kangra national highways have become prone to landslides and soil erosion.Number of small and big culverts had been badly damaged. During past two rainy seasons these highways had developed major cracks. Besides, there were major traffic jams for hours putting passenger and tourists into inconvenience. As per existing provisions of law no truck or dumper could carry more than 9-ton load, but there had been no check on overloading in the state. Weighing bridges installed at high costs by the government at different entry points of the state had been lying out of order for the past many years. Wherever these were in working condition, these were not put in to use by the officers posted on the interstate barriers. Officers do not bother to repair these bridges. In the absence of proper check, 60 per cent of the trucks had been carrying goods more than the prescribed limits. Recently a bridge collapsed at Manikaran when a heavy overloaded vehicle was passing through the bridge. The state government should learn a lesson from Maharashtra and Karnataka, as these are the two states in the country, where there has been blanket ban on the entry of the overloaded trucks. In these states, no truck could carry more than 9-ton of load. If an overloaded vehicle was detected, a minimum fine of Rs 10,000 is imposed. All interstate barriers are equipped with latest weighing machines and it is mandatory for every vehicle to pass through these machines. An officer of the rank of district transport officer mans all such interstate barriers. Therefore, the condition of roads was much better in these two states as compared to other states. If Himachal also enacts the same laws, the situation could be improved here also and the state could save crores of rupees spent on repair of roads every year. At present, the state government spends over 2,000 crore every year on the re-surfacing and repair of its national and state highways. There had been manifold increase in the number of vehicles after the commissioning of cement plants, execution of power projects and other construction activities. But no efforts have been made to widen the roads. The accident rate on the national and state highways has also gone up. The state should come out with new legislation without any further delay.
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Awareness drive against child labour
Mandi, November 18 The ministry of information and broadcasting and the films division of the government of India have launched a national screening programme for all children in government-run schools throughout the country, including the state. The films are being screened to inculcate awareness about the abuse of domestic child labour, use of bio-diesel, new and renewable sources of energy, herbal heritage and promotion of religious brotherhood among them. The ministry has given rights to the Bhartiya Shiksha Abhiyan (BSA), an NGO based in Pune, for the screening. These films are on child labour, importance of bio-diesel, depleting herbs and religious brotherhood as symbolised by the Dargah of Khawaja Moinnuddin Chistee in Ajmer. Nodal franchisee of the BSA Mountain Expeditions in the state Khem Raj Thakur said, “We have launched a screening programme in schools in Bhuntar, Nagwani, Pandoh and in Mandi and Kullu districts. We will cover the entire state by 2009.” Even the schoolchildren are appreciating the films being screened in Pandoh, Bhuntar and Nagwani in the Kullu-Mandi belt. “Children should be sent to schools so that they get education and stand on their own feet and fight exploitation. But efforts should be more sustainable”, remarked Mehar Thakur, a school teacher at Thalot school. A film on renewable energy highlights the disadvantages of using coal and other non-renewable sources of energy. It also shows interviews with renowned scientists Amulay Reddy from the Indian Institute of Science, CL Gupta from the Tata Energy Research Institute and Mashehwars Dayal, secretary, commission for additional sources of energy. Director education OP Sharma said the permission for screening the films in schools had been granted to the mountain expeditions commencing for the academic year 2008-2009. “They will charge Rs 3 per student for screening films as recommended by the ministry”.
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Labour laws a hurdle
Rakesh Lohumi Tribune News Service
Shimla, November 18 He was keen on recruiting only women workers at the new plant set up at Parwanoo at an investment of Rs 50 crore for making suspension parts for vehicles. However, he had to contend with only 150 women in the total workforce of 230 as the labour laws of the state do not permit the members of the fair sex to work in night shifts. As such, women could not be asked to work in the plant after 10 pm. Anand is quite disappointed as he wished to make the new unit a model for women empowerment that others could emulate. He wants the government to amend the law so that women in the state can work at his plant. In these times of cut-throat competition, industrial plants have to be operated in three shifts and as such there is no other option but to have some men, at least one-thirds of the total workforce, for running the plant at night. However, he maintained that still women would mainly operate the plant. If the government amended the archaic law, it would help create more employment avenues for women. Another hurdle in providing employment to women in the auto-manufacturing industries was that trained women were not available. The mechanical trade was not offered to women in any of the polytechnics or industrial training institutes in the state. It was a big disadvantage for the state as the auto-sector had registered speedy growth and generated much employment in recent years. His group of companies has been recruiting women mainly from the ITI at Kandaghat where they undergo training in the electronics. The government should introduce the mechanical trade in women ITIs without any delay.Some women from the state were working at the plants at far-off places like Chennai, Pune and Gurgoan. Some southern states like Tamil Nadu and Karnataka had already amended the laws and there was no bar on women from working in night shifts. Himachal had been a peaceful state where women could easily work during night without any risk. Moreover, the companies would provide transport facility and hostel facility for unmarried women and take care of all the aspects pertaining to their security. Similarly, the condition of 70 per cent employment to local people was also difficult to fulfill, as required manpower was not available in the state. There were more women available compared to men for recruitment, but the labour laws come in the way. At a time when women have broken the shackles and came into exclusive male preserves like the Army and the Air Force, labour laws preventing them from working in night shifts could only cause discrimination. In the hill state in particular, they have left the men behind in academics and as is becoming evident now they are capable of doing a much better job as industrial workers in trades hitherto monopolised by men.
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Painting competition on Children’s Day
Shimla, November 18 Ramandeep Sohal of the local DAV school, Lakkar Bazar, bagged the first prize of Rs 10,000 while Ankit Khachi of Kay Dee Public School, Jubbal, came second . The third prize went to Pushpadeep of the local Dayanad Public School. Consolation prizes were also given to 10 other students. Besides, a participation fee of Rs 1,000 was given to all the children. The SJVN owns and manages the country’s largest 1,500 MW Nathpa- Jhakri project. Board in a fix
The state electricity board has not been formally unbundled but the government has, by creating two subsidiaries to discharge the functions of generation and transmission, prepared the grounds for the trifurcation of the state utility. The Himachal Pradesh Power Corporation, the first undertaking to be created, has been assigned six major projects with an aggregate capacity of about 950 MW and the board has been left without any project. Last week the government, by a notification, decided to hand over all the major transmission works to the newly set up State Power Transmission Corporation. The employees and engineers of the board, who have been opposing the unbundling, are crying foul. They allege that the covert moves of the government have made plight of the board even worse, as under the present arrangement the legalities of the board are not taken. The board would have been better if unbundling was carried out in accordance with the provisions of the Electricity Act, 2003.
Water shortage
The city has been facing water shortage even during the lean season. Many localities have been receiving inadequate and irregular supply for the past one week. The severely affected areas include Summer Hill, particularly the university hostels, Annandale, Lower Kaithu and
Boileauganj. The university authorities had to deploy private tankers to meet the demand. Water shortage during the peak summer season when the discharge in the water sources declines and demand increases due to the rush of tourists is not unusual. But this is not the case in winter. The municipal authorities have blamed the erratic power supply which affected pumping of water from various sources.
— Rakesh Lohumi
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vignettes “One morning my munshi came and told me that a sati (woman) who was going to burn herself on the funeral pile of her husband was about to pass by the garden gate. I hastened to obtain a sight of her. She was dressed in her gayest attire… She walked forward with hurried and faltering steps like that of a person about to faint… Her countenance had assumed a ghastly appearance, which was partly owing to internal agitation and partly, so I was informed, to the effects of opium and bhang and other narcotics with which she had been drugged to render her less awake to the misery of her situation. In about half an hour, preparations were completed. She was thatched in upon the top of the pile, whilst her husband’s body lay outside. It was finally lifted to her. The head was placed on her lap. The fire was applied in different parts and all was quickly enveloped in a shroud of mingled flame and smoke”. It is an incident reported by a Briton, Godfrey Thomas Vigne, in “Vigne Travels”, who had visited Mandi during the reign of Raja Balbir Sen in 1839. H.W. Emerson, superintendent and settlement officer, Mandi in 1915-1917, had noticed a curious superstition related to sati in Mandi. He saw a villager who, before crossing a stream, picked up a stone and threw it on a large pile of similar stones. The villager told Emerson that a widow had performed sati here and that her spirit haunted the place, so a passerby had to placate it with an offering. The gazetteer of Mandi, 1920, also refers to heaps of stones, called sati heaps, lying by the roadside. These were because a widow having resolved to climb the funeral pyre with her dead husband would lay a stone at a certain spot and after she performed sati, each passerby would throw a stone at it to make it a cairn in the honour of her virtuous end and also to soothe the spirit. The rajas and ranis had different practices. They would erect sati pillars, locally called “barselas”. Those of the Mandi rajas can be seen jumbled together at a congested place on the left banks of Suketi Khad. These lay unattended although the site is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India. These unique sculptures disclose the chronology of various rajas’ demise and the accession of their successors from Hari Sen, 1623 to 1920. The pillars now have been dwarfed by houses constructed all around. The pillars dedicated to the three rajas, Kesava Sen, Gur Sen and Shiv Jwala Sen, have no inscriptions. With the death of a raja in Mandi, sati was not performed by the ranis only, khawasis (concubines) and rakhails (slave girls) also used to jump on the funeral pyre and had been sculptured in the “barselas”. Hence, the name sati pillars. The maximum number of women who had committed sati in Mandi along with the death of a raja is 30. But Harcourt writing for “Kooloo, Lahoul and Spiti” mentions of such pillars in Kullu too and writes with grief that “human sacrifices must have been very great in some instances, for it is not uncommon to find 40 to 50 female figures crowding the crumbling and worn surface of the stones.” Though the sati custom was declared illegal in India by Lord William Bentick in 1829, it continued in the princely state of Mandi and officially came to an end with a nine-point treaty between raja Balbir Sen and the British government in 1846. The treaty, inter alia, required from the raja to rub out three other black spots too, “to put an end to the practice of slave dealing, female infanticide, and the burning or drowning of lepers who are opposed to British laws”. As late as 2002, about 200 “barselas” or sati pillars were found in Sukhar Nagrada village near Baldwara when Munshi Ram, a farmer, was reclaiming an abandoned piece of land. Archaeological experts had taken the charge of this newly found historical treasure.
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A boon for Palampur residents
Palampur, November 18 An MOU to this effect has been signed between JP Group, the state government and the VMRT . The government is also one of the trustees as it has given land measuring 60 acre for the project. The proposal to set up this super-specialty institution was made by Shanta Kumar in 1992 when he was the Chief Minister. The institute was meant to provide quality healthcare to people of the state where there were no medical facilities worth the name. The foundation stone of this project was laid in 1992. Earlier, it was a joint venture of the state government and the Apollo group of hospitals, who had to run this institution through a private trust. But later, the group left the project halfway. Thereafter, neither the state government nor any other private party showed interest in the completion of this project. For almost 10 years, it remained confined to the official files.The Congress as well as the BJP who ruled the state virtually abandoned this project. Since, this was a dream project of Shanta Kumar, he continued his crusade and set up another trust to run this institution. Later in 2000, he joined the union cabinet and sought public cooperation to complete this venture. A trust headed by Shanta Kumar was formed to execute this project. Besides, Shanta Kumar other social workers and respected citizens of the region were also included in the trust. The old trust in which the state government was also one of the trustees was dissolved. The state government also transferred land measuring 40 acre situated in the heart of the town to the new trust on a token lease of Rs 1 per year. Shanta Kumar collected over 30 crore through donations and constructed the hospital complex. After his resignation from the Vajpayee government, the institute suffered a major setback and again the construction of the building was left halfway. Till recently, the institute was a distant dream for the residents of lower hills. Now, it is coming true as the JP Group agreed to provide financial and administrative assistance and signed the MOU with the institute and the state government who are the major trustees. Besides, setting up of a super-specialty hospital with 500 beds, the project also envisages to provide medical college, nursing institution, para-medical school and yoga and naturopathy treatment facilities. The trust had made specific provision in its bylaws to provide free medical aid and keep 20 per cent beds reserved for poor patients. The trust is also committed to provide other medical facilities on affordable rates to other patients.
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Kullu roads in bad shape
Kullu, November 18 The road from the local Truck Union Community Hall to Lakshmi Narayan Temple through the inner Akhara Bazaar is the worst while the road between Kangra Cooperative Bank and the Market Committee yard has not been repaired since its construction in 1994. Drains on both sides of the national highway passing through Akhara Bazaar are choked. Neither the national highway authorities nor the local municipal council have taken any steps to get these cleaned. The local body said the drains were to be repaired and maintained by the national highway authorities while the latter passed the buck to the municipal council. Besides, the council had removed garbage bins from many places like Loran, Shashtri Nagar, Dhalpur and a few spots in Akhara Bazaar. The people near these areas throw garbage either into the nullahs or the Beas. Loran and Shashtri Nagar nullahs are overflowing with filth.The area around the regional hospital at Dhalpur is another health hazard.The waste can be seen scattered near the gate. The condition near Government Senior Secondary School, Dhalpur, is also not different. Heaps of garbage, stacking of building material and haphazard parking of tractors, three-wheelers and rehris can be seen there. The maintenance of streetlights is the last priority of the local body. Citizens' complaints in this regard are hardly looked into. The worst-hit areas are in upper Gandhi Nagar, Upper Sultanpur, Math, Bhootnath and Shishamati. None of the public parks is being maintained. Toys and swings at Ram Bagh, near Ramneek Hotel and Sarwari, are either damaged or stolen. None of the parks is properly maintained and the prime spots of the town are an eyesore and need immediate attention of the administration.
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Stray dog menace unchecked
Dharamsala, November 18 Rajesh Kumar, whose father Jai Chand died of a dog bite last month while talking to The Tribune said.” A stray dog bit my father some time ago. Within half an hour, he was taken to the zonal hospital at Dharamsala. From there,he was referred to Tanda Medical College. The doctors started treatment immediately”. “The district health authorities are claiming that my father died as we first took him to quacks for treatment. They are making such statements just to wash their hands off the charge of negligence or ill- pre-preparedness to tackle the stray dog bite cases,” said Rajesh. “I just want that the cause of the death of my father, despite medical treatment from the best government hospitals of the region, should be found and responsibility should be fixed on the culprits.” He was not only demanding an explanation from the health department but had also submitted memorandums to local ministers to tackle the problem. The civil surgeon, Dharamsala, while talking to The Tribune, attributed the deaths to tendency of locals to first approach quacks.However, investigations by The Tribune revealed a different story.The deaths were caused due to ill-preparedness of the health department to tackle the class C bites, in which the virus directly entered blood. The patients died as they were never given any serum required in case of a bite due to its non- availability at Tanda Medical College. Professor in the department of preventive social medicine in Tanda medical college Ashok Bharadwaj said the serum was required to be given within seven days in case of class C bites by rabid dogs. He also admitted that the serum was available neither in the district nor at the medical college. He said earlier poor patients used to get it from the CRI, Kasauli, free of cost. However, since the institution had now stopped the production, only private companies were supplying it.
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Children’s Day with a difference
Hamirpur, November 18 Guests showed their skills at various games and proved that given an opportunity,every child was capable of proving his or her talent. Deputy Commissioner, Hamirpur, Abhishek Jain stressed the point that every individual had his or her capabilities and no disability could ever be a hindrance in excelling in life. The enthusiasm of the children while participating in the games was also an indication that while there was a need to provide opportunities to them , such exposures generated extraordinary confidence in them. Basketball, balloon race, carom board, musical chair and Jalebi race were organised in the programme, in which 40 children and their parents participated. Vandana won the first prize in the jalebi race while Anshul Kumar and Sumit won the second and the third prizes,respectively. In basketball throw, Asha Kumari won the first prize and Anil and Satvinder won the second and the third prizes. In musical chair competition, Munish won first, Vandana second and Jaswidner won the third prize. In the carom board competition, Asha, Munish and Sanjay were placed first, second and third, respectively. In the balloon race, Mamta won the first place and Anshul won the second.
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