LAHORE: A team of the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) reportedly sealed a private school in Iqbal Town on Thursday morning when the students were ‘in classes’.

The school management reportedly de-sealed the building on its own and managed exit of students.

LDA officials claimed the school building was sealed at about 6am after its owner failed to deposit commercialisation fee with the government treasury despite issuing repeated notices to him.

They say since private offices/buildings/work places are always sealed in early morning hours as a strategy to avoid inconvenience, the school in-question was also sealed well before its opening time.

“In fact, the school owner used a media team for showing its school as sealed after opening. When the owner saw that his school was sealed early in the morning, he de-sealed it on his own unlawfully and started getting kids into school.

At the time of school closure, the owner got the kids out from the school through the same gate he opened by de-sealing it earlier,” LDA’s Chief Town Planner Chaudhry Muhammad Akram told Dawn.

He said a case had also been registered against the owner for de-sealing the school on his own without paying commercialisation fee to the government in violation of law.

AWARDED SENTENCE: A spokesman for the SNGPL on Thursday lauded the decision of a district court, Hafizabad, for awarding seven-year imprisonment with a fine of Rs1 million to a local politician for tampering with the gas meter.

The spokesman said accused Zulfiqar Ali had been involved since long in tampering with the meter of his CNG station on Chiniot Road.

The SNGPL anti-theft team had raided M/s Bhatti CNG station on Sept 8, 2013, and got a case registered under Section 462-E at the City police station.

Meanwhile, the spokesman claimed that gas connections of various public and private offices in Islamabad and Rawalpindi region had been severed for being defaulters of bills worth Rs4.335 million.

Published in Dawn, February 20th, 2015

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