June 21, 2002	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 9, 1423

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

MULTAN, June 20: The Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) has finally accredited Zakariya University College of Engineering and Technology.

According to a Press release of the Bahauddin Zakariya University, the council has given accreditation to civil and electrical engineering departments.

The college had launched its operation in 1994 by introducing four-year BSc engineering courses in electrical and civil technologies. But due to the pending of the PEC accreditation, public and private sectors were reluctant to employ its engineers.

To meet the PEC criterion, the university management recruited qualified staff and upgraded the college laboratories.

The management hailed the interest taken by university chancellor and Punjab Governor Khalid Maqbool in resolving the longstanding issue.

DIGITIZED: The Pakistan Telecommunication Corporation Limited has digitized two more telephone exchanges in its Multan region.

The newly-digitized exchanges are Shujaabad and Sikanderabad.

Telephone numbers of the Shujaabad exchange will now be started by prefixing 396 instead of earlier 596. While the non-digital numbers which were started with the digit 2 will now be initialized by prefixing 397.

Similarly, telephones of Sikanderabad have been initialized with the prefix of 397 instead of earlier 597. The last three digits in all cases will remain the same.

In this way, at least 1,533 telephone numbers in Shujaabad and 188 in Sikanderabad have been changed.

NOTICES: At least 11 revenue department officials in the Multan district have been served show-cause notices for their failure to expedite the revenue collection.

Those who were served notices are: tehsildar Ghulam Dastagir, Malik Khuda Bakhsh, Muhammad Ali Ghallu, Rana Arshad, naib tehsildar Muhammad Younas, Ghulam Ghaus, Gohar Nawaz Dhaku, Afzal Hiraj, Muhammad Ramzan Butta, Sibte Hassan and Abbas Mehmood.

Seraiki Party: The Pakistan Seraiki Party will now focus on to build constructive and cordial relations with the people who matter in Lahore and Islamabad.

Talking to Dawn, PSP chief Taj Muhammad Langah said his party had decided that it would not side with extremist elements whether they are in Seraiki political arena or in nationalist forces of small provinces.

He said experiences had shown that the nationalist forces in smaller provinces had always toe the line to satisfy their own agendas, and for this the leaders of Sindh, Balochistan and NWFP maintained a certain level of cordial relations with the forces that mattered in national affairs.

He alleged that political forces of smaller provinces especially of Sindh had used Seraikis as ‘sandbags’ in their confrontation with Punjab to make them (Seraikis) scapegoat of their designs. “But now the Seraiki movement has reached to a certain level of maturity where it cannot be used as pawns,” he said.

Mr Langah said his party would welcome every development project to be launched in the Seraiki belt, including the Greater Thal Canal project. He said the PSP had no objection if some of the command area lands would be allotted to non-Seraikis.

“We will cancel all such allotments after the creation of Seraikistan province,” he said.

He said the ‘myth’ of allotment of some 0.5 million acres to civil and military bureaucracy and judges in the command area was mere a negative propaganda by NGOs working on environmental issues. “The PSP opposes the viewpoint to stop development in the name of so-called environmental problems,” he said.

The PSP chief also criticized some Sindhi leaders for demanding closure of Taunsa-Panjnad and Chasma-Jhelum canals, saying: “They are denying rights of Seraiki people under the pretext of opposition to Punjab.”

He said some of the Seraiki nationalist leaders were so ‘simple’ that they were unable to understand the phenomena of the mechanism of politics.

BZU RESULTS: The Bahauddin Zakariya University declared the results of BSc electrical engineering (third professional), second annual examination, 2002, on Thursday.

Some 25 students took part in the examination and of them 11 were declared successful, showing a pass percentage of 52.38.

Roll numbers of successful candidates are 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 14, 19 and 23.