KOHAT: The Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl and social and political figures have warned of protests if the decision to shift the Kohat campus of the University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar, to another district is not withdrawn.

They appealed to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Ghulam Ali, who also belongs to JUI-F, to immediately cancel the order in the larger interest of the students from Kohat, Karak, Hangu, Orakzai, Kurram and Bannu districts.

The demand was made at a meeting of the JUI-F district cabinet presided by party’s emir Maulana Abdur Raheem on Friday.

JUI-F leader and city mayor Qari Sher Mohammad was also in attendance.

It was unanimously decided to meet the governor and apprise him of the people’s grievances over the decision to shift the UET campus from Kohat to some other district.

Former PML-N senator and state minister for commerce Abbas Khan Afridi said they would use all means for retaining the campus in Kohat.

MONKEYPOX: The management of the KDA Teaching Hospital has reserved two separate male and female wards for the patients of contagious monkeypox disease.

Medical superintendent Dr Nasir told Dawn on Friday that staff had also been deputed at the 10-bed wards.

He said an awareness campaign had also been launched about the symptoms of the disease so the victims could report to doctors at an early stage of the painful contagion.

TRANSFERS CRITICISED: A forum representing social organisations has assailed the transfer of three district police officers by the caretaker provincial government in a span of only two months.

Addressing a press conference on Friday, the alliance president Pir Shah Nawaz said the DPOs had been transferred to Swat, DI Khan, and Charsadda from Kohat, which had dozens of oil and gas fields. He said the pretext for such abrupt transfers was that law and order situation in those districts was precarious.

He regretted that street crime, murders and attacks on police were on the rise in Kohat, but the caretaker government ‘overlooked’ such incidents.

GAS OUTAGES: The SNGPL consumers would be subjected to 14 hours of gas outages, according to a loadshedding schedule issued on Friday.

According to the schedule, in the gas-producing zone the consumers would have to brave huge gas cuts as the supply would be available from 5am to 8.30am, from 11.30am to 1.30pm, and from 6.15pm to 1.30pm.

Meanwhile, consumers are experiencing power cuts of 18 hours in Chor Lakki, Zia Shiekh Allahdad, Shadipur, the city, and dozens of adjacent villages.

The consumers complained electricity and gas supply disappeared simultaneously messing up businesses and domestic lives.

Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2023