Power outages rile students

Power outages rile students
Lahore: The ongoing power crisis, besides crippling routine life and damaging almost all the sectors in the country, has been badly affecting the academic activities as well as causing nuisance to those involved in online social networking and micro-blogging.

The frequent power outages with rising mercury have been adding to the miseries of students, especially those appearing in various ongoing examinations and those studying computer sciences at school, college and university levels.

During the last week, the Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) had officially admitted that the gap between demand and supply of power widened to the unprecedented level of 5,722MW.

At present, the shortfall is reported to be around 4,000MW owing to which in the areas under the Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco), there is scheduled loadshedding of six hours in urban areas while up to 11 hours in rural areas. Apart from scheduled power outages, people are also facing unscheduled and unannounced abrupt loadshedding.

The situation is worse and more deplorable in the far-flung rural areas of the country where the duration of power outages touch 20 hours out of 24 hours of a day.

As the academic session just began in April and academic activities are in full swing, students have to face power outages during school-hours too. The children of primary classes have to sit tight in classrooms without electricity amid increasing hot weather.

It is also unfortunate that many of the private schools, as private schools have been operating unbridled in the country, have started collecting funds from students to install power generators or UPS.

It is also pertinent to mention that apart from the Punjab University's BA/BSc Annual Examination 2011, a number of other universities and higher education institutions have been conducting examination these days while Intermediate Annual Examination 2011 to be conducted by the Lahore Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) and other boards in the province will commence from May 7.

A student, Muzammil, who is appearing in PU's examination, said the power outages were badly affecting his study for exam. He said it was unfortunate that the democratic government in the country had failed to tackle the energy crisis. Talking about the likely alliance between the PPP and PML-Q, Muzammil said the rulers always protected their own interests and never worked for masses welfare. "This alliance will be nothing for people of the country if it too failed to take the nation out of prevailing power crisis," he said.

Another student, Gohar Imtiaz, who is preparing for his intermediate (Class-12) examination said loadshedding was creating a lot of trouble for him. "The crisis is so severe that we, the students, cannot focus our studies," he said, adding "There is need of prompt and sincere efforts by the government to provide relief to the masses."

A youth, Tariq, said that online social networking and microblogging were favourite indulgence of educated youth in the worse prevailing law and order situation and incidents of terrorism. "However our right to resort to such facilities is also being snatched owing to power crisis," he said.

"This is the age of digital technology but those at the helm are the least interested in opening its door to people," Tariq added.

He was also of the view that all the political parties instead of political mud-slinging should sincerely work for development of the country and its people.

Medical college fraud case adjourned
Lahore: An accountability court on Friday adjourned until May 6 the recording of statements of two witnesses in the Al-Huda Medical College fraud case.

Previously, the court had recorded statements of three witnesses in the case.

The NAB Punjab had booked Al-Huda Medical College Principal Sayed Asif Ali Bukhari for setting up the college illegally as well as pocketing fees from students.

Asif Ali Bukhari, a resident of Islamabad, had made Al-Huda Medical Colleg on Peco Road in the year 2001 without getting approval from the University of Health Sciences (UHS) and Pakistan Medical and Dental College (PMDC).

The accused allegedly earned millions of rupees as fee money from around 300 students after which he disappeared. The UHS dispatched a notice to the administration of Al-Huda Medical College to close the college but the administration ignored the notice and continued its working by giving admissions to the second batch of students on October 1, 2004.

As Lahore High Court on October 27, 2004 also gave its order to close the college but the administration did not bother in this regard.

However, the college administration had closed the college on April 19, 2005. Bukhari disappear after which the students of the college had lodged about eight FIRs against the college administration. The NAB Punjab had arrested Asif on May 25, 2007. The news