January 28, 2003	Tuesday	Ziqa’ad 24, 1423

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

GUJRANWALA, Jan 27: The Punjab government will set up leather stitching centres in Sialkot, Gujrat, Gujranwala and other cities to boost export of leather products.

The leather products are very popular in the US and other countries and the country is earning Rs600 million dollars per annum through their exports.

This was pointed out by Punjab Industry Minister Chaudhry Ajmal Cheema while speaking to an oath-taking ceremony of the Institute of Leather Technology here on Monday.

He said the government wanted to provide better facilities to leather institutes to enhance exports by providing modern machinery and funds.

Provincial Education Minister Mian Imran Masood said that solid steps were being adopted to promote primary and middle education, and for this purpose the government had allocated Rs27 billion in the budget.

The government, he said, would soon declare English from class first and computer education from class four compulsory throughout the province.

He said the government had already announced free education upto Matric while the private schools would be forced to fix 10 per cent quota of free education for the poor students.

He expressed his ignorance that teachers recruited on contract basis had been deprived of their salaries for the last three months.

MNA Qazi Hamidullah, MPA Ashraf Kamboh and others also spoke on the occasion.

TRANSFERRED: The property of sole leather technology institute has wrongly been transferred to the Auqaf department while the landgrabbers, who occupied some portion of the building, are now keeping their eyes on rest of the building.

This was stated by leather institute project director Chaudhry Muhammad Akram here on Monday.

He said the students could not be provided better facilities as the institute was facing scores of problems. The old boys association of the institute also expressed serious concern over occupying some portions of the building by landgrabbers. They demanded that the Punjab chief minister and other high-ups should take stock of the situation.

The project director said the institute had not been equipped with modern machinery since 1976.

COMPLAINT OFFICE: The range police chief set up a complaint office at the DIG office and deployed lady police inspector Farkhanda Kauser as its incharge here on Monday.

DIG Malik Muhammad Iqbal said solid steps were being taken to provide prompt and cheap justice to the people. He asked the affected people to submit their complaints without any fear.

EXTENDED: The last date for submitting the admission form of primary and middle standard scholarship examinations is extended from Jan 27 to Jan 31.

The Executive District Officer (Education) in a press release issued here on Monday said the students of private schools were also allowed to take the examination.