January 24, 2006	Tuesday	Zilhaj 23, 1426

KARACHI, Jan 23: Sindh government has identified three alternate access routes to the Rafiqui Shaheed Road with Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, National Institute of Child Health and National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases located on the stretch.

Talking to the journalists after administering oral polio vaccine to children at the NICH on Monday, Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad said these routes would be materialized soon to facilitate unhindered and timely arrival of patients at the three major hospitals.

“This is urgent because of ever growing traffic load on the connecting road,” he commented.

Earlier, the governor administered polio drops to children visiting the NICH, inaugurating the country-wide 57th National Polio Immunization Campaign on Monday.

He said that the government was making all out efforts to attain ‘zero polio prevalence’ across the province.

The governor made a passionate appeal to parents to ensure that routine immunization programme was strengthened. People must see that none of their children were denied of vaccines available free of cost under routine immunization programme, prerequisite to combat different fatal diseases, including polio.

He observed that since involvement of lady health visitors in the immunization programme, the immunization campaigns had gained significant momentum and larger number of children could be witnessed being provided with these vaccines.

Dr Ibad said that the country was fast moving towards the objective of ‘zero polio prevalence’ as misconceptions previously registered among parents about the disease as well as the vaccines had been removed.

Extensive door-to-door availability of the Oral Polio Vaccines in the remotest areas too had improved the situation, he said while mentioning that no new polio case had been reported in the province since September 2005.

RAIL LINK: All the development work on Khokrapar-Munabao railway link will be completed by Jan 31 and the first train will leave for India in mid February.

This was stated at a high-level meeting, which reviewed the arrangements for the start of Khokrapar-Munabao rail link, held at Sindh Governor’s House on Monday.

Sindh Governor Ishratul Ibad while presiding over the meeting asked all the departments concerned to extend cooperation in providing better travelling facilities to the passengers on this route and make their voyage memorable and pleasant.

Speaker Sindh Assembly Syed Muzaffar Husain Shah, Home Minister Rauf Siddiqui, Finance Adviser M.A. Jalil, Information Adviser Salahuddin Haider, DG Rangers Maj-Gen Javaid Zia, Chief Secretary Fazlur Rehman and senior officials attended the meeting.

The governor directed the authorities to provide water on emergency basis at the railway stations through tankers instead of normal arrangements. In addition, he asked for the availability of medical teams, hospital and ambulance at the destination, besides providing toilets and other facilities at the stations.

He also specifically asked concerned departments to prefer locals in the appointments under this project.

The governor said that restoration of Khokrapar-Munabao rail link was a vital step and travelling on this route would be made historical and magnificent for the passengers. “Its revival was a long standing demand, pending for the last several decades,” he said.

Ishratul Ibad said that restoration of this project would generate job opportunities for locals and boost commercial activities on this route.—APP