April 14, 2008	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 7, 1429

LARKANA, April 13: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah has promised that the 860 ad hoc lecturers recruited by the previous government will be regularised soon and their three months’ withheld salary will be released, according to a statement issued by the Sindh Professors and Lecturers Association (SPLA) on Sunday.

A spokesman for SPLA, Manzoor Kalhoro, said the chief minister had made the promise in a meeting with the association’s delegation, which met him and Sindh Minister for Education Pir Mazharul Haq on Saturday at Moenjodaro airport during their visit to Larkana.

The lecturers had been recruited in 2005 after they fulfilled all conditions but the government had since then been making promises that they would be confirmed, the delegation told the chief minister.

The delegation informed him that the lecturers appointed in the NWFP, Balochistan and Punjab during the same period were regularised in 2006 while the Sindh government made only hollow commitments.

They told him that the PPP’s leader of opposition in the previous government Nisar Ahmed Khuhro had moved a motion calling for the regularisation of lecturers in Sindh Assembly but it was not taken up for discussion.

PROTEST: A joint token hunger strike by the Pakistan People’s Party-Shaheed Bhutto and Sindh National Front in protest against the acquittal of Aif Ali Zardari in Mir Murtaza Bhutto’s murder case entered the sixth day on Sunday.

PPP-SB office-bearer Barkat Mirjat, Muzaffar Sahito, Hoat Khan Miralee and Sajjad Solangi who joined the hunger strikers camp outside Jinnahbagh said that Asif Zardari had been acquitted and another important name Shoaib Sudle had been posted as new police chief of the province.

The government had rubbed salt into the wounds of PPP-SB workers by appointing the Sudle, they said.

ROBBER KILLED: A robber was killed and a shopkeeper injured when police and robbers traded fire on Bundar Road on Sunday.

The robber was identified as Sajjan Machi of Cattle Colony and the injured shopkeeper Ghulam Akbar Bughio was admitted to Chandka Medical College Hospital.

In another incident, two robbers deprived Mashooque Chandio of his motorcycle on Bundar road.

He raised hue and cry drawing attention of a policeman deployed nearby who rushed after the robbers and exchanged fire wit them in which the robber was killed and a stray bullet hit a shopkeeper inside the shop. The other robber escaped.