Punjab govt ‘takes over’ 72 flour mills
Monday, September 01, 2008
LAHORE: A war of nerves has started between flour millers and the Punjab government after its officials 'took over' 72 flour mills of Lahore and Sheikhupura region besides taking into custody flour stocks in different districts during the wee hours on Sunday.
The officials of police, food and revenue departments of the Punjab government took part in the operation to ensure the flour supply to Sunday bazaars. The Punjab government took the extreme step after the refusal of flour millers to do so.
Punjab Food Secretary Rao Iftikhar, talking to The News, said as many as 341 flour mills out of total 600 had announced their full support to the Punjab government. The association has objection to the formula of population-based wheat quota release, inter-district flour and wheat movement, and cancellation of wheat quota of 57 flour mills.
The Punjab government has not taken over any of the flour mills, he said, adding it had just deputed its officials at the mills to regulate the flour supply. "The government has right to regulate flour supply and keep a vigilant eye on the wheat supplied by it," Rao said.
According to government calculations, a flour mill with four rollers can earn Rs 300,000 a month if it gets wheat at Rs 560 per maund. But this profit is not acceptable to the flour mills which earned much more profit during the last season.
Immediately after the Punjab government's action against the flour millers, the Pakistan Flour Mills Association Punjab branch called a press conference threatening that the flour supply would deteriorate.
However, an official of the Punjab Food Department said they had made all the arrangements to ensure availability of the staple food at Rs 300 per 20 kilogram during Ramazan. After Ramazan, he said, the provincial government would evolve a new policy and price.
Sources in the flour milling industry said there was rift among the members of the association. Flour Mills Association's Sargodha Division vice chairman Iftikhar Sidhu said he had already been lifting wheat quota from the government godowns and ensuring the price and supply to his division. He has influence in his division over the association members and is also annoyed with the chairman of the Punjab Branch of the Association, Habib-ur-Rehman Legahri, on the flour quota and supply to NWFP and Balochistan.
Similarly, the association members of the Rawalpindi division have differences with the chairman as he did not support them in a strike call given by them recently. Now almost every flour mill in Rawalpindi division is lifting the wheat quota regularly from the government godowns.
The Pakistan Flour Mills Association (Punjab Branch) chairman said at the press conference that the association had prepared a writ petition against the Punjab government on the imposition of inter-district flour movement ban, Wheat Release Policy 2008-09, 'illegal' takeover of flour mills and confiscation of flour after breaking the locks of their mills. On the other hand, the Punjab government said it was ready to fight the millers even in courts.
Leghari showed the keys of the flour mills of Lahore and Sheikhupura region and said the remaining flour millers in the province would also give the government their keys today (Monday) in the general body meeting of the association.
The meeting will decide as to which official of the Punjab government will be given the keys of all the mills in Punjab. He said the Punjab government should itself run the flour mills and supply flour to the people. He added the Punjab government would be responsible for paying electricity bills.
Leghari said the association had been cooperating with the Punjab government over the last three months but the government had disappointed them. He claimed that the Punjab government last year paid Rs 52.50 for grinding 20 kilogram of wheat but now it was paying only Rs 10 under the new policy.
He alleged that the Punjab food secretary had kept Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif in the dark by portraying a wrong picture. He condemned the registration of FIRs against the millers.
He said the millers did not want confrontation with the government or to make the public suffer during Ramazan. He claimed that none of the millers had announced their support to the Punjab government.
12 die as bus falls into drain near Narowal
Monday, September 01, 2008
SHEIKHUPURA: Twelve passengers, including six children and four women, were killed and 50 others seriously injured when a bus fell into a drain on the Muridke-Narowal road on Sunday.
The overloaded passenger bus was on way to Narowal from Lahore, when it fell into a drain near Bhago Dial village while saving a motorcycle-rickshaw. As a result, 12 passengers, including Faryad, Razia Bibi, Naziran and nine unidentified people, including women and children, died instantly while more than 50, including Muhammad Boota, Muhammad Ramazan Shahzad, Allah Rakha, Tahir and others were seriously injured.
EDO (Health) Zafar Iqbal Khokhar said emergency had been declared at the Muridke Tehsil Headquarters Hospital while most of the injured passengers were rushed to the Mayo Hospital. Rescue teams of police, Edhi ambulances and civil organisations rushed to the spot and took out bodies and injured people from the drain. An eyewitness, Muhammad Lukman, said he had taken out 12 bodies from the nullah.
18 local Taliban surrender to Peshawar police
Monday, September 01, 2008
PESHAWAR: The Capital City Police achieved a major breakthrough on Saturday when 18 local Taliban surrendered before it after a Jirga successfully brokered a peace deal between the law enforcers, elders of the Mattani Adezai and local elite.
The Taliban and the elders swore on holy Qur’aan that they would give their full support to the police and remain peaceful. The Jirga was held at the Police Club, Peshawar, where it remained in session for three days.
Addressing the Jirga, Chief of Capital City Police, Dr Muhammad Suleman, said being Muslims, it was our duty to live like brothers and maintain cohesion in our ranks and file. The youth of the Mattani Adezai area swore that they would work for the supremacy of Islam, honour and dignity of the country and fight against the miscreants.
They gave full assurance to the police in this regard. It was also agreed upon that violators of the agreement would be dealt with according to the law. SSP Operations Peshawar, Kashif Alam, SSP Rural Nasirul Mulk Bangash, SP Chaudhry Ashraf and DSP Peshawar Cantt Rashid Khan repres-ented the police while Dilawar Khan, Haji Niaz Muhammad, Nazim Asad Khan, Shamsher Ali, Hazrat Khan, Waqif Khan, Haji Abdus Kalam, Malik Hasham and youth of the area represented the elders of the Mattani Adezai on the Jirga.
Asian pollutants threaten US
Monday, September 01, 2008
WASHINGTON: From 500 miles in space, satellites track brown clouds of dust, soot and other toxic pollutants from China and elsewhere in Asia as they stream across the Pacific and take dead aim at the western US.
A fleet of tiny, specially equipped unmanned aerial vehicles, launched from an island in the East China Sea 700 or so miles downwind of Beijing , are flying through the projected paths of the pollution taking chemical samples and recording temperatures, humidity levels and sunlight intensity in the clouds of smog.
On the summit of 9,000-foot Mt. Bachelor in central Oregon and near sea level at Cheeka Peak on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula, monitors track the pollution as it arrives in America.
By some estimates more than 10 billion pounds of airborne pollutants from Asia — ranging from soot to mercury to carbon dioxide to ozone — reach the US annually. The problem is only expected to worsen: Some Chinese officials have warned that pollution in their country could quadruple in the next 15 years.
While some scientists are less certain, others say the Asian pollution could destabilise weather patterns across the North Pacific, mask the effects of global warming, reduce rainfall in the American West and compromise efforts to meet air-pollution standards.
“East Asia pollution aerosols could impose far reaching environmental impacts at continental, hemispheric and global scales because of long-range transport,” according to a report earlier this year in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
The report said that a “warm conveyor belt” lifts the pollutants into the upper troposphere — the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere — over Asia, where winds can bring it to the US in a week or less.
The National Academies of Science, at the request of the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and in consultation with the State Department, has assembled a panel to examine the problem and its impact. Its report is due next summer.
“Everyone realizes this is an issue of growing importance,” said Laurie Geller of the National Academies of Science. “This is very challenging science with lots of complexities and a lot of uncertainties.”
Though the problem of Asian air pollution has been known for years, no one has a handle on how much is blown in and what it includes. Scientists say Washington state and Oregon might be feeling the brunt of the effects.
“This pollution is distributed on average equally from northern California to British Columbia,” said Dan Jaffe, a professor of environmental science at the University of Washington’s Bothell campus. “Anyone who has gone out to measure it has found something.”
Particulates such as dust and soot, along with heavy metals, pesticides, PCBs, mercury, ozone, carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide have all been found. Jaffe said the pollutants can’t be tracked to a single source such as a particular coal-burning plant, but their “chemical fingerprints” can point to a specific country.
Viruses, bacteria and fungi also can be transported on dust particles, though, so far, they’ve been found only on the dust and sand blowing off African deserts, not Asian ones.
Taliban divided over ceasefire
Monday, September 01, 2008
ISLAMABAD/MINGORA: The Taliban were divided on Sunday in their response to the government’s decision to suspend the military operation against them during Ramazan.
“It’s a joke. It isn’t a matter of holy or unholy. All months are holy. If they want to end fighting, it should be permanent,” Muslim Khan, Taliban spokesman in Swat, told Reuters. In an apparent act of defiance, the Taliban bombed the abandoned house of PML-Q leader Haroonur Rashid.
But TTP spokesman Maulvi Omar welcomed the government’s offer and said his group would release six soldiers. A complete ceasefire was observed in Dara Adam Khel on Sunday.
Assets worth Rs 50m lost in fire
Monday, September 01, 2008
LAHORE: A fire broke out in Liberty Plaza on Sunday at noon and reduced valuables worth more than Rs 50 million to ashes.
Rescue officials claimed that the incident occurred due to a short circuit. They said that the market was closed when the fire occurred, due to which the incident was reported a bit late, which resulted in a huge loss. They said that locals called for help upon seeing the flames. Which said that they extinguished the fire after a continuous effort of three hours once they reached the site.
Rescue sources claimed that three locals and a rescue official received minor injuries while extinguishing the fire. They claimed that the fire had engulfed 15 shops in the plaza, but they had managed to save valuable worth millions of rupees during the rescue operation.
Liberty Market Businessmen Association member Rana Tariq told Daily Times that three shops, including a cosmetics shop, had been destroyed in the fire, while 12 other shops were partially damaged. He said that the owner of a cosmetics shop claimed to have lost valuables worth Rs 30 million in the fire.
He said that the fire might have been caused due to the negligence of labourers who were working in one of the tailor shops and had left in the morning. “We believe that one of them might have left the iron plugged in and switched on,” he said.