0
GUJRANWALA, May 25: The city tehsil council failed to auction the contract of the general bus stand buses and wagons when all the contractors boycotted it here on Wednesday. Reports said the city tehsil council convened a meeting of the auction committee to award contracts for the GBS public transport. As many as 17 contractors deposited their call invoices for participating in the auction.
However, the auction clerk elaborated on the future of the tehsil council and said the city may be divided into four towns before the local-body election by the Punjab government. In case of the division, he said, the contractors might lose their money.
Alarmed by the warning, the contractors boycotted the auction and met union councils’ naib nazims, who claimed that the proposal for the city’s division was under consideration.
The city tehsil council fears that it will be deprived of an income of Rs250 million to Rs300 million if the contract is not auctioned.
TREES CHOPPED OFF: As many as 3,800 trees from Gujranwala to Sadhoki along the GT Road have been chopped off for construction of a six-lane road.
The Punjab Forest Department has earned Rs26.2 million after auctioning the trees, Divisional Forest Officer Chaudhry Wahid Sarwar said on Wednesday.
He, however, said the department had opposed at a high-level meeting the cutting of these trees and suggested that the banks on either side of the road should be expanded for the project. He said the department had spent hundreds of thousands of rupees on planting these trees two years go.
He said new trees would be planted along the GT Road following the completion of the project.
PROTEST: Residents of Chianwali village have protested against emission caused by printing factories and demanded that they should be sealed till their owners adopt protective measures.
Reports said the villagers, led by union council Nazim Chaudhry Hamid Naseem Cheema, gathered on a main road and chanted slogans against the factory owners.
They said emissions had become a permanent nuisance for the residents. Two villagers — Mukhtar Ahmad and Rasoolan Bibi — had lost their lives a month ago owing to these emissions.
DESECRATION: The District Bar Association will take out a procession on Thursday (today) to protest against alleged desecration of the Holy Quran at a US prison, secretary-general Chaudhry Anwar said in a press release issued on Wednesday.
