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TOBA TEK SINGH, May 21: Crops spreading over hundreds of acres were inundated as a result of breach in the Khewra canal — a distributary of the Jhang branch canal — near Chak 402-JB, Virkanwala, early Sunday morning.
Initially 20-foot wide, the breach widened to 35 feet and the irrigation department staff plugged it after five hours.
Irrigation employees union leader Allah Bakhsh Sial has blamed the influential farmers for creating breach to irrigate their farmlands.
He said all the canal banks where breach took place had already been bricklined so there was no question of a natural breach. He demanded an inquiry into the matter.
The farmers, on the other hand, alleged that the irrigation officials did not protect the canal banks properly.
INJURED: Robbers shot at and injured two persons for not stopping a pick-up near Chak 287-GB on the Rajana-Pirmahal Road on Saturday night.
Reports said Saleem and Rana Ibrar were on their way to Pirmahal by their pick-up (FDO-3563) from Faisalabad. When they arrived at a deserted place near the village, four armed men tried to stop them but the driver accelerated.
The robbers opened fire on the pick-up, leaving both occupants injured and they were admitted to the DHQ hospital in critical condition.
UNIVERSITY: A US-returned philanthropist is establishing a university in Kamalia which, he says, will be affiliated with an American institute.
Makhdoom Nazar Husain told journalists at a lunch in their honour on Sunday, he had returned home after 22 years and was now aspiring for setting up a university on which he had already spent Rs25 million.
