FAISALABAD, March 8: The ruling PML activists have adopted a novel strategy to get a maximum number of people enrolled as the party members by collecting computerized national identity cards from people with a promise to supply them flour on subsidized rates.
It is learnt that the Tehsil Municipal Administration (City) Nazim, who is the PML district president, has been utilizing his influence to achieve the target. He has given the TMA employees a target to enrol a maximum number of people as the PML members.
Source said heads of different branches of the administration along with the subordinate staff were distributing the prescribed forms for the PML membership. The officials, they said, were collecting CNICs from people with a promise to provide them coupons for subsidized flour bags.
According to sources, union council Nazims and Naib Nazims had been asked by the TMA Nazim to try their best to make the 'campaign' a success. The UC secretaries, they said, were going an extra mile and filling the forms of the people by themselves.
They said every visitor to the TMA (city) offices to get his problems solved was being forced to deposit a copy of NIC and sign the membership form. Meanwhile, political circles have blasted the move and said the city has become a camp office of the ruling party as the entire staff has been assigned the job of accumulating memberships.
A TMA official told this correspondent on the condition of anonymity that the staff had been asked to achieve the target of enroling 100,000 citizens as members of the ruling party.
WOMEN'S RALLY: Hundreds of women belonging to a cross-section of society took out a rally in connection with the International Women's Day on Tuesday. The participants marched through various city roads and held a demonstration at the Clock Tower Intersection. Banners and placards in their hands were inscribed with slogans in favour of their demands.
The speakers demanded that the government should formulate a comprehensive policy for the protection of women rights, making amendments to the Hudood Ordinance and check violence against women. They claimed that despite all-out efforts by the government as well as NGOs, violence against women was on the rise. Over 6,000 women were raped or abused in one way or the other in 2003, they lamented.
Earlier, a seminar was held at the district council hall in which office-bearers of women rights' organizations gave vent to their feelings and pointed out problems being faced by women in the country.
HELMET PRICES: District Coordination Officer Athar Husain Khan has constituted a 10-member committee comprising officials of the traffic police and district administration, and traders for the supply of helmets at controlled rates.
Presiding over a meeting here on Tuesday, the DCO nominated DO Malik Muhammad Aslam, SP (Traffic) Malik Abdul Aziz, Regional Transport Authority district secretary Muhammad Iqbal, DSP (Traffic) Asif Zafar, DSP (City) Malik Rasheed and traders - Nawaz Vohra, Taj Mahmood, Tajammal Waheed, Sheikh Ejaz and Muhammad Kashif - to monitor sale of helmets at prescribed rates.
The DCO also announced setting up of a control room to take immediate action against the violators. The DCO also urged the shopkeepers dealing in helmets not to take undue advantage of the situation.
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