September 22, 2003	Monday	Rajab 24, 1424

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SWABI, Sept 21: The Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology would hold a three-day All Pakistan competition, Softcom 2003, on Thursday.

The competition would be comprise software, multimedia, quiz and speed programming.

A spokesman for the institute told reporters here on Sunday that Softcom 2003 would provide opportunities to the contestants prove their skills in various categories of the information technology. He said that the first prize of the software competition would be Rs50,000 and the second prize would be Rs30,000.

In the multimedia competition, the prizes for animation and web-related competition would be Rs15,000 each.

In the quiz competition, the winner would get a prize of Rs15,000 and the winner of speed programming would be awarded Rs10,000.

He said that around 300 students of from all over the country were expected to compete in the event. The spokesman said that the event was being organized by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), GIKI student chapter.

TOBACCO PURCHASE: The major tobacco purchasing companies — Pakistan Tobacco and Lakson Tobacco — has assured the tobacco growers that they would pick up all the surplus crop from the growers.

A member of the Pakistan Tobacco Board said that the board had also assured the growers that they would purchase all the surplus tobacco from them.

He explained that out of the 13 million kilogram surplus tobacco, seven million kilogram would be purchased by the LTC, four million kilogram by the PTC and only two million kilogram by the small cigarette manufactures.

The general secretary of Anjuman-i-Kashthkaran, NWFP, Ismail Jan Khan said on the contrary that there were more than 15m kg surplus tobacco in the district and  the companies had purchased it at a rock bottom prices from the farmers who did not hold any agreements.

He said although the PTB had declared that the small cigarette manufactures would purchase two million kg surplus tobacco but they had violated the tobacco rules and never materialized agreements with the growers but despite that the board had remained dormant and failed to take action against them.