SUKKUR, Sept 25: Work to fill a ditch that has occurred under the span 1 and 2 of the Sukkur Barrage was again resumed on Saturday and will continue for about 84 hours.

According to Syed Jalal Haider, the project engineer of the MEW private company, hired for the work, the resumption of the work had been scheduled for Friday but delayed because a team of army engineers had not arrived to supervise the work.

He told this correspondent that on Thursday night, he had contacted the officials of the army engineer corps at the Pano Aqil cantonment, who had asked him to start the work on Friday.

He said that the officials of the engineer corps were expected to visit the barrage anytime to inspect the repair work.

Mr Haider said that they had prepared a work schedule for 84 hours and required material had already been procured to continue the work without any break.

He further said that besides laying concrete under water, sonar tests of the 66 spans of the Sukkur Barrage should also be carried out.

LONG MARCH: Hundreds of paramedics, on the call of the Sindh chapter of the Pakistan Paramedical Staff Federation, started a long march from Kashmor to Karachi to pressurize the health authorities to accept their demands.

The protesters stared the long march from the taluka hospital of Kashmor and then staged a sit-in on the Indus Highway for an hour, because of which hundreds of vehicles remained stranded.

Speaking on the occasion, provincial chairman of the federation Aijaz Ahmed Kakepoto, president Niaz Hussain and others said that they had held several meetings with the health authorities on their demands but to no avail.

They said that their demands included a better service structure, 25 per cent job quota for the children of retired employees and selection grade for the staff of the Extended Programme of Immunization.

They said that the paramedical staff in other provinces were enjoying the facilities but those in Sindh were being ignored.

SPELT MOOT: The Society of Pakistan English Language Teachers would organize an international conference on "Innovative Teachers; Agents of Change" from Oct 6 to 7 at the Public School Auditorium, Sukkur, said a press statement issued here on Friday.

WORKSHOP: The assistant regional director of the Allama Iqbal Open University Centre, Sukkur, in a press statement issued here on Friday, asked students of the university belonging to Sindh who had not appeared in a workshop of ATTC-608 course, spring semester of 2004, to contact the Sukkur office up to Sept 30.