June 20, 2006	Tuesday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 23, 1427

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SAHIWAL, June 19: As many as five people died and 30 others injured in the district when it was lashed by a powerful windstorm followed by mild rain on Sunday night. Reports from across the district said that during the short but high-velocity windstorm, many trees were uprooted, while electricity and telephone networks got disrupted in a large area.

An aged woman, Khurshid Begum, and her grandsons— Asim an eight class student and Arshad —- were buried under the debris of a wall, which collapsed because of the windstorm, and were killed.

Similarly, in Bhojian village Bilal (10) and Aftab (8) were killed when the veranda of their house caved in.

Out of the 30 people who were reportedly injured in various storm-related incidents in the district, the condition of Haider Ali (7) of Jahaz Ground, Liaqat Shah of Bhuttonagar, Shahid of Kot Allah Din, Abdul Ghaffar of Chak 64/5-L, Khalid of Chak 93/9-L, Muhammad Bashir of Baba Farid Park, Razia Bibi of Bilal Colony, Qasim Ali of Chak 93/9-L and Noor Neeshan of Chak 62/4-R is stated to be serious in the DHQ Hospital.

In Farid Town’s scheme No 2 and 3, the electricity wires were broken due to uprooting of the trees, causing seven-hour outage in the area.

Meanwhile, some electricity poles fell in the city suspending power supply to Rajpura, Dispensary Road and Chak 111/9-L for 18 hours. The supply could not be restored till the filing of this report.

The telephone service in Farid Town and Kot Allah Din was disrupted due to rainwater, which damaged the PTCL’s underground cables.

Traffic remains suspended for three-four hours on Noorshah-Faisalabad road and Sahiwal-Qutub Shahana road due to the uprooted trees.

PROTEST: Hundreds of residents of Chak 72/4-R and adjoining area took out a protest rally against non-restoration of electricity which got disrupted when a transformer collapsed four days ago.

The rally participants staged a protest demonstration in front of the deputy manager’s (operation) office, and claimed that the transformer had collapsed for the seventh time during this summer.

They alleged that on each occasion, the line superintendent concerned collected 10,000 from the residents of affected localities for ‘repair’ of the transformer.

They demanded immediate restoration of power supply to the area, besides an inquiry against the officials involved in corruption.