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‘Missing workforce’ add to residents' woes
9,900 to appear for TET
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Congress election agent files complaint with ECI
NRI police station: Only 2 cases registered in 5 months
Absent from poll rehearsal, 9 served show-cause notice
Power cuts haunt residents
Singing sensation Pardeep makes the city proud
100 students attend 7-day NSS camp
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‘Missing workforce’ add to residents' woes
Talwandi Sabo (Bathinda), August 20 With a large number of posts lying vacant, the employees and workers of the corporation are assigned duties which do not match with their actually allocated tasks. While the city residents fume at the filth and piling of garbage all around the safai karamcharis and other officials remain busy performing various tasks at the official or private residences of the senior government servants. While some safai sewak's are performing the task of drivers, gardeners are working as helping hand at the residence of the Deputy Commissioner and other senior functionaries, clerks are tasked with the work of supervisor, sanitary inspectors are working as clerks and so on. Admitting this, the corporation officials stated that they have taken up the issue with the secretary local bodies and Punjab Chief Minister. "We will again take up the issue with the senior most officials on August 26 to discuss modalities to withdraw major workforce deployed in the residences of the IAS, the IPS and judicial officers and others residences," said Ravinder Cheema, president of the Municipal Workers' Union-Municipal Corporation Bathinda. President of the Safai Sewak Union Veer Bhan said a major chunk of the workforce of safai sewaks continued to render their services at the residences of the government services despite the fact that they are actually suppose to maintain cleanliness on streets and roads. "There are workers, which we never saw in our lifetime doing their actually assigned work and get retirement from the residences of the government officials. We have already apprised the Chief Minister about the problem recently," Veer Bhan said. There must be more than 100 such workers deployed in the government residences for the past long time, said the union presidents-Ravinder Cheema and Veer Bhan-tentatively. As per the details provided by the corporation under the Right To Information Act (RTI), there are 1,322 sanctioned posts in the corporation and 1,154 are filled and 168 have been lying vacant for the past long time. With the announcement of increasing the area under the municipal limits, more safai workers and other work force is required and to mitigate the cleanliness and other issues of the wards. Commissioner Speaks: "Well, I am not aware of such a huge workforce deployed in the residences of senior administrative of other officers, but will surely check this out for better utilisation of this 'hidden' workforce", said Corporation Commissioner, Dalwinderjit Singh. On vacant posts, he added that a detailed project has been sent to the head office seeking to fill all such posts. |
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9,900 to appear for TET
Bathinda, August 20 The examination will be held in two sessions. While the B.Ed passed teachers will appear for the TET in the morning session (10:30 am to 1 pm), the ETT passed teachers will appear for the examination during the afternoon session (2:30 pm to 5 pm) in Bathinda district. The Education Department has constituted 26 examination centres in Bathinda of which four are in Talwandi Sabo and five are in Rampura Phul. Three hubs, from where the question papers will be disseminated and the answer sheets will be submitted and collected at, have been set up. These include the Government Girls Senior Secondary School in Bathinda, Government Girls Senior Secondary School in Mandi Phul and Khalsa Senior Secondary School in Talwandi Sabo. To ensure the smooth conduct of the examination, the Education Department has deputed 26 principal cadre teachers as superintendents and 26 master cadre teachers as deputy superintendents while 425 ETT teachers have also been assigned duties. 20,000 TET passed teachers await jobs
While close to 10,000 aspirants are preparing to appear for TET on Sunday, there are close to 20,000 TET pass teachers who are still waiting to get government jobs. While there are close to 2,500 ETT-TET passed unemployed teachers, there are 18,000 B.Ed-TET teachers who are waiting for jobs. In the run-up to the bypoll in Talwandi Sabo, the TET-passed teachers had launched a protest against the state government and had climbed atop a water tank in the assembly segment. To pacify the protestors, a meeting with the Chief Minister of Punjab, Parkash Singh Badal, has been fixed for August 23. The protesting TET-passed teachers stated that the state government had failed to give jobs to the TET-pass teachers despite the fact that thousands of posts were lying vacant in government schools across the state. |
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Trees axed for lawyers’ chambers in court complex
Bathinda, August 20 The wood was auctioned for Rs 64,000. While Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal announced to give Rs 50 lakh for the chambers during a sangat darshan last year, Deputy Chief Minister had announced Rs 2 crore grant in the presence of Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court Sanjay Kishan Kaul and other dignitaries during the inauguration of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Centre in January this year. The axing of these trees will pave way for the construction of 232 new chambers for the lawyers. Apart from the axing of the trees, temporary arrangements for typists were also demolished. The lawyers who failed to get chambers earlier are likely to be accommodated in the new building. The convener of the Chamber Construction Committee, advocate Sudhir Goyal, said the approval of the site map was received from the building committee of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. “Though we are yet to receive the funds, we have got Rs 85 lakh from the applicants,” he said. He added that each lawyer had deposited Rs 36,000 in three installments. Sudhir said every floor of the new building would have 58 chambers and would be equipped with lift and RO water. |
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Congress election agent files complaint with ECI
Bathinda, August 20 In his complaint, Singh said, “At about 13:15 hours, I along with Mandeep Singh, was going in Mahindra Scorpio (white) bearing registration No. PB-03-AF-9640 from the Congress Election Office, Talwandi Sabo, to the SDM Office. On the way, we were intercepted near Khandewala Chowk, Talwandi Sabo, by a police party consisting of DSP Gurjit Singh Romana, DSP Gurmit Singh Kingra and DSP Palwinder Singh Cheema accompanied by other police officials. Our car was searched but nothing illegal was found. We were not allowed to go after the search and were detained there despite verification of my identity and the verification of my being Harminder Jassi’s election agent. Thereafter, we were taken to DSP’s Office in Talwandi Sabo on the pretext of getting my election agent identity card verified from there. They detained us for hours together illegally. We were released and allowed to go only on the intervention of Harminder Singh Jassi.” Reacting to the complaint, Jassi alleged that the election was one-sided as the ruling alliance was using cash and other means to buy votes. “My election agent was detained by the police for no reason and after I complained to
the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) the police party didn’t take action against those who were busy distributing cash and liquor among the voters in Sheikhpura. The administration and the police are hand in glove with the ruling alliance,” said Jassi. “Within five minutes of receiving the complaint from the Congress candidate, I sent across an SP-rank police official to the place but the police party found nothing concrete and had to come back. There are so many rumours going around and we got repeated calls from both the sides and I can vouch for the fact that the police have responded with equal alacrity,” said SSP Gurpreet Singh
Bhullar. |
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NRI police station: Only 2 cases registered in 5 months
Bathinda, August 20 “NRIs can file complainant through e-mail (nriwingbtimail.com). Once they file complaints, we record their statements through e-mail,” SHO Sanjeev Mittal said. It is mandatory to take action on the complaints filed by NRIs within a stipulated time so that they do not run pillar to post for justice. However, only two
cases have been registered out of 150 complaints received by the police station. It seems either the complaints filed by the NRIs are wrong or the police have not taken the investigation of the complaints seriously. Notably, of the two registered cases, one has been registered for abusing the Station House Officer (SHO) of the police station over the phone. In a complainant, SHO Sanjeev Mittal stated that the accused, Rajesh Chawla, and Hardip Kaur, both residents of Faridkot, abused him over the phone and tried to influence his working. SHO Sanjiv Mittal said only two cases had been registered out of 150 complaints received by them. He said the reason behind the trend was that in most of the cases, people opted for the out-of-court settlement or compromise. The police stations for the NRIs have been set
up in Punjab following a promise made by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal at an NRI convention in the state. |
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Absent from poll rehearsal, 9 served show-cause notice
Bathinda, August 20 The teachers who have been served the notices are Devinder (Mandi Phul), Gurpret ( Aklia Jalal), Gurpreet (Bhokhra), Daljeet (Bhagta), Jasveer (Semaan), (Daljeet) Beer Behman), Surinder (Bhokhra), Rohi Singh (Sandoha) and Jatinder Singh (Jeonda).
— TNS |
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Power cuts haunt residents
Bathinda, August 20 The Punjab Government is capable of providing only 3,300 MW of power from its own hydel and thermal power plants. The Karchamwangtoo power plant provides 575 MW of power while the Naptha-Jhakhri and the Rampur power plants provide 200 MW and 25 MW of electricity to Punjab. The state is already purchasing 5,300 MW of power from outside the state at Rs 4.5 per unit. As per sources, a unit of the Ropar thermal plants was also shut due to some technical snag. Jagga Singh, a farmer of Ranjitgarh Bandran village in Mansa, said, “The power shortage is a common problem here. The government promised us eight hours of electricity, but we got six hours of power supply. Many a times, the power is supplied only for four or five hours.” A Bathinda resident, Subhash Chandar, said, “We were provided power for two hours only at Vishal Nagar today. The power cuts have added to the woes of the residents. The government should chalk out a strategy to deal with such a situation. Many thermal plants could not come up despite the completion of the land aquisition process. The govemnremnt should frame the power policy while keeping the agony of the residents in mind. Senior Engineer (Grids) PK SIngla said, “The closure of the hydel plants for a day had not affected much though urban areas faced power outages. The farmers supplied power for four to five hours.” |
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Cotton crop starts wilting as rain god looks the other way
Bathinda, August 20 The Meteorological Department said there was 60 to 70 per cent less rainfall this year. The department said the situation would worsen if it did not rain in the upcoming week. The poor monsoon have increased the worries of the farmers. On an average, Punjab receives 580 mm of rainfall anually and 80 per cent of the rainfall takes place in June, July, August and September. Even if it rains now, the cotton yield in non-irrigated tracts is likely to remain low while some farmers will have to resow the crop. A large number of farmers will have to skip the kharif crop entirely and go for the rabi ones. Sukhjit Singh, a farmer of Bhagi Wandar village, said agriculture depended heavily on monsoon but due to weak monsoon this season, the input cost had gone up. The farmers are using more fertilizers to save their crop from insects. Another farmer, Ranjit Singh, said the deficient monsoon had affected his crop as the growth of the crop had been hampered by the hot and humid conditions. He urged the government to look into the losses of the farmers as they were already reeling under debt. Meanwhile, Agriculture Department officials said there were reports of damage to the crop in many parts of the region. Earlier, the state government had urged the farmers to go for the crops that required less water. |
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Singing sensation Pardeep makes the city proud
Pardeep Sran has already earned a name in the music industry by winning the singing contest “Voice of Punjab” in 2011. While his father Parkash Sran, a resident of Azamwala in Fazilka, is a folk singer apart from being a successful farmer, his mother Amrit Sran is a teacher. Pardeep won an international dance competition at the age of 12. He also won a gold medal at a youth festival in folk singing during his college days. He has won medals in swimming, hockey, throw ball and basketball competitions. |
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100 students attend 7-day NSS camp
Bathinda, August 20 The aim of the camp was to spread awareness on environmental issues among the youth by involving them in tree plantation at Harike Pattan and cleaning of the Kali Ben area. Recently, nine volunteers from the campus were selected to participate in a youth leadership training camp at Manali by PTU, Jalandhar. Their discipline and participation of the volunteers was appreciated by SM Kant, convener of the Manali camp. During a similar NSS camp, organised by PTU last year, volunteers of the Bathinda campus had received the award of excellence. The NSS units of the college actively participate in blood donation camps and tree plantation drives besides spreading awareness on issues such as cancer. Prof Ranjit Kaur, NSS in-charge of the campus, coordinated the activity. Campus director Dr Jasbir Singh Hundal congratulated the volunteers on the successful completion of the camp. |
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Bathinda, August 20