Shaping the future of street children
Dehradun, September 25
Under the aegis of CHETNA - Childhood Enhancement through Training and Action - an NGO and Axis Bank, a seminar for the welfare of street children was organised here yesterday. CHETNA is a Delhi-based NGO and for the past eight years, it has been working for the development of street children in five states.



Street children at an interactive session organised by the CHETNA foundation in Dehradun. A Tribune photograph

Mussoorie Diary
Residents up in arms against eco tax
Mussoorie: The controversy over the newly imposed eco tax on vehicles shows no signs of abating. Beginning this week, four-wheelers have been ordered to pay Rs 30 for the pleasure of driving up to the hill station. Residents of Mussoorie are up in arms, demanding that the municipal board ought to withdraw the imposition.

Illegal transporters thrive in state
Roorkee, September 25
Unrestricted plying of unauthorised buses, cabs and jeeps has become a major headache for the Uttarakhand Transport Department here.

Security guidelines for jewellery shops
Haridwar, September 25
With increasing incidents of theft, robbery and shoplifting, the police has come up with certain instructions for shop owners to check such crimes.


Haridwar SSP Sanjay Gunjiyal directs jewellery traders and owners on security measures in Haridwar. Tribune photo: Rameshwar Gaud

 

 

ITF Women’s Tennis Tournament
Big names fail to attract crowds
Vishal Thakur
Tribune News Service

Dehradun, September 25
The fifth ITF tournament is coming to an end in Dehradun. Despite big players sweating it out, the meet has been unable to draw crowds.

The trend has continued for the past seven years in Dehradun. Sports have picked up in popularity among youngsters of the city but big tournaments have failed to draw big crowds.

The ongoing ITF $10000 Women Tennis Tournament features big names in women tennis like Poojashree Venkatesha, who is ranked in India after Sania Mirza, Rushmi Chakravarthi, who is ranked sixth in India, and Sweta Solanki who is ranked eighth.

Foreign players include Anastasia Malhotra (Japan), Miki Miyamura (Japan), Keren Shlomo (Israel), Chun-Yan He (China), Jasmin Steinherr (Germany), Moe Kawatoko (Japan) and Jade Hopper (Australia).

Poojashree Venkatesha and Rushmi Chakravarthi had recently won the ITF Bangalore and ITF Delhi tournaments respectively and Chun-Yan He was the runner-up at ITF Delhi.

If this was not enough, there was a known Spanish player Sergio Sabadello, who had coached international players like Ana Ivanovic, Sose Luis Clbrc and Diego Hipperdinger.

Plus, on the umpire’s chair was Nitin Kannamwar. In 1994, he became the first Indian umpire at Wimbledon.

He has been an umpire in 25 Grand Slam tournaments which include 13 Wimbledon championships.

Arun Saxena, office secretary of the Uttaranchal Tennis Association, said that the city lacked sports culture with parents putting pressing on children to study.

“Though children want to pursue sports, but their parents’ priority is studies,” he said.

He added that there was a difference in the attitude of the crowd of the metro city and other cities. The crowd at the metro city is more inclined towards sports than in other cities, he said.

“We cannot say that the city is insensitive towards sports. Tournaments for juniors like ‘Talent Serious’ got a good response from residents. But this is not so for big tournaments as residents do not find any local name in the meet,” said Saxena.

He said that two things were responsible for the lack of crowd support in the ongoing tournament. First, most children had their school examinations at the same time and secondly, September is a month full of festivals and most elders were involved in performing rituals. Therefore, residents did not come up in large numbers at the Shanti Tennis Academy to witness the ITF tournament.

Dehradun organised its first major tennis tournament in 2003. The tournament was organised at The Doon School. Two years later, another tournament was held at the same venue.

Since then, an international tournament has been organised in the city every two years.

Shaping the future of street children
Divya Semwal
Tribune News Service

Mussoorie Diary
Residents up in arms against eco tax
Tribune News Service

Mussoorie: The controversy over the newly imposed eco tax on vehicles shows no signs of abating.

Beginning this week, four-wheelers have been ordered to pay Rs 30 for the pleasure of driving up to the hill station. Residents of Mussoorie are up in arms, demanding that the municipal board ought to withdraw the imposition.

Many residents, they explained, commute between Mussoorie and Dehradun daily and sometimes during festivals, special occasions, weddings and for seeing off or receiving guests, some of them are forced to drive up and down even twice or three times a day.

Although residents are exempted from paying the tax every time they move in and out of the town, the fine-print in the notification apparently states that residents will have to pay Rs 100 per annum in addition to the House Tax and the Scavenging Tax that they have been paying.

But residents complain that while local vehicle owners may not have to pay eco tax, those who travel by taxis or buses would have to pay higher fare which would be charged from passengers.

Moreover, they argue that the municipal board has failed to utilise funds available with them to clean up the city.

“If they cannot maintain roads, can do nothing to control traffic snarls during tourist season, cannot clean up the town, why should they arbitrarily impose this new tax,” asked an irate resident. He may have a point.

During the tourist season, several hundred vehicles often line up to either enter or leave the hill station, making it a nightmare for those who are travelling on business or are trying to reach hospitals, airports and railway stations.

Some residents feel that one way out is to fix two-hourly slots thrice a day - in the morning, afternoon and evening - for tourist vehicles, taxis and buses to go up or come down.

That is to say, between 8 and 10 am, let vehicles drive up from Dehradun while between 10 am and 12 noon, let vehicles come down. A radical solution perhaps, but residents feel it is worth considering.

Vegan Khursheed’s omelettes

Regular visitors to Mussoorie are, of course, familiar with the omelettes that he has been making since 1972.

But Khursheed, who is a vegetarian and changes his clothes before going back home, claims his talent is a gift from God.

“My omelettes are safe and will not weigh heavy in your tummy,” he claims with quiet confidence and goes on to add, “Even those children, who are allergic to eggs, can have my omelettes without fear”.

His small stall was, of course, crammed on Thursday with uniformed schoolchildren on their monthly outing when residential schools let out children on the Mall for four hours in the afternoon.

There were other groups who were waiting outside. The waiting time in the evening is often two-and-a-half hours, he informed.

He insists that his special customers use their hands to pick up the omelette and eat. “See,” he said triumphantly, “It does not smell of eggs.”

Plain omelettes in oil or butter and cheese omelettes are the ones which he sells the most, besides boiled and half-boiled eggs.

But come winter, he invites his guests back for a taste of his chocolate omelettes and, even more curiously, his special ‘rabri omelettes', both of which would take over 15 minutes to make. The tourist traffic in winter, he explained, is less and this gives him more time to make the special omelettes.

Chocolate paan

Hill stations are known for their home-made chocolates and Mussoorie is no exception with the Mall Road full of outlets selling such stuff.

And now, ‘paan sellers’ seem to have jumped on the bandwagon in a bid to cash in on the passion. Difficult to say if it has caught on but judging by the chocolate-paans on display, the novelty value does seem to entice some visitors to have it.

Real estate booming?

If a real estate broker on the Mall Road is to be taken at face value, the sector is booming. Bungalows are available for Rs 40 lakh and more while flats are on sale from Rs 20 lakh upwards.

The going rate for a fancy bungalow of course would be Rs 1.5 crore or more and a spacious flat might cost Rs 40 to 50 lakh.

But, he assured, there was no dearth of buyers. And if you register the property in the name of women, he informed, you pay less duty in Uttarakhand. He was, of course, sitting alone and no buyers were in sight.

Illegal transporters thrive in state
Akash Ghai
Tribune News Service

Passengers using state transport
Month	2008	2009
March	2,08,000	1,75,000
April	2,00,000	1,80,000
May	2,05,000	1,90,000
June	2,15,000	1,95,000
July	1,80,000	1,50,000
August	1,85,000	1,60,000

Roorkee, September 25
Unrestricted plying of unauthorised buses, cabs and jeeps has become a major headache for the Uttarakhand Transport Department here.

Not only the department has been suffering revenue losses running into lakhs every month, but also losing commuters in a large number to this illegal transportation.

The statistics provided by the Roorkee Depot of the department show that the roadways buses have lost around 1.5 lakh commuters in six months this year compared to the same period in 2008.

Whereas in 2008 as many as 11,93,000 passengers had travelled in state-owned buses from March to August, this year the number has reduced to 10,50,000.

Terming it a big loss, RP Bharti, Assistant General Manager, Uttarakhand Roadways (Roorkee Depot), admitted that the unauthorised bus service, which is popularly termed as “daggamaar” in the area, is the main reason behind the losses of the department.

“These ‘daggamaar’ transporters, which mainly consists of mini-buses, can be seen plying anywhere in the area without any check. These vehicles stop everywhere to pick commuters for short distances. As these are plying from village to village, town to town and even have inter-city service, roadways buses suffer huge losses as far as number of passengers is concerned,” said Bharti.

There are hundreds of such illegal vehicles running in the area. These vehicles are also popular among the masses as their charges are very nominal, ranging between Rs 5 and Rs 10.

The AGM lamented that the menace has been brought to the notice of the authorities concerned and the police many a time, but to no avail.

“Almost every month, we apprise the authorities concerned of the nuisance but it seems no one is bothered about it,” said Bharti.

A local commuter Kailash Chander alleged that the unauthorised transport was being run with the connivance of the police. “These operators use to give ‘hafta’ to the police and other authorities concerned so no one takes initiative to stop this menace”.

Security guidelines for jewellery shops
Sandeep Rawat
Tribune News Service