September 11, 2007	Tuesday	Sha'aban 28, 1428

GUJRANWALA, Sept 10: The Punjab Professors and Lecturers Association (PPLA) has expressed concern over likely privatisation of around 424 colleges in the province, and threatened they would launch a protest drive if the government did not withdraw the decision.

At a meeting held here on Monday, PPLA Vice-President Prof Mahboob Sidiqi said the government had decided to privatise about 100 colleges in the first phase while the remaining would be privatised later.

He warned that teacher organisations would resist the government’s decision while the future line of action would be announced soon after a meeting of all associations of the teaching staff.

District Education Officer (Colleges) Abas Harl denied the privatisation reports, and said he had no information in this connection.

SCAM: An embezzlement scam in citizen community boards (CCBs) of 14 union councils worth millions of rupees has surfaced while the city district government on Monday issued show-cause notices to the chairmen and secretaries of the CCBs.

Sources told Dawn that 14 CCBs were registered with the district government and their chairmen were allocated at least Rs1 million each to purchase tractors, bulldozers and other agricultural machinery to generate income for the welfare of the community in their respective areas.

Though some of them purchased the machinery, they used it for their personal consumption while some of them did not purchase the machinery at all and embezzled the whole money, they said and added some of the CCBs chairmen did not deposit the income generated through the machinery in CCBs accounts and misappropriated the same.

District Nazim Fiaz Ahmad Chattha ordered an inquiry to ascertain the truthfulness of the accusations. The inquiry officer has issued show cause notice to the officials concerned.