News

indianexpress: All 25 Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) offices, including the headquarters, 14 ward offices and 10 Sampark offices, will soon get wireless connectivity to avoid administrative delays caused by frequent collapse of underground cables.

“The PMC’s initiative of e-governance to speed up administrative work is hampered due to frequent breakdown of landline cables connecting all offices. Hence, official work is delayed,” said chief accounts officer Ambrish Galinde.

The PMC recently launched e-governance service for property tax, building permission, work flow management and birth and death certificates through the connectivity at its 25 offices for quick service.

However, administrative work suffered every time underground cables were damaged by road digging for various reasons like laying drainage lines, drinking water pipelines, constructing stormwater drains, underground telephone or electricity cables. “There is always the fear that cables will get damaged,”said Galinde.

To overcome the situation, the civic administration has tabled a proposal in the Standing Committee seeking approval to allot a contract for wireless connectivity in all its offices.

The PMC witnessed several hiccups in the implementation of the e-governance project as cables connecting all the 14 offices and 10 Sampark offices with the server in the main building were damaged, the proposal said.

indianexpress: The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), in its quest to become a garden city, would soon start work on a 300-acre biodiversity park at Baner.

In a proposal tabled in the Standing Committee, the civic administration has sought sanction of Rs 13.92 lakh for the measurement of land for the park to construct a boundary wall.
 
According to the proposal, the soil conservation work will soon be initiated in the earmarked land along with water conservation measures by constructing various nallas and ponds in the area.

The PMC will plant fruit-bearing plants and has planned 2,000 saplings with an additional 8,000 more in the next few months. Trees felled for development work in the city would be transplanted here.

Deer, rabbits and peacocks will be released in the park, the proposal said.

The PMC has already set aside Rs 2 crore for the biodiversity park in the annual budget of 2006-07. The PMC has already constructed nalla parks, a butterfly park and an energy park in the city.

In another proposal, the civic administration has sought the appointment of 22 junior engineers on a six-month contract basis to oversee road works

indianexpress: After the Symbiosis Society launched an entrepreneurship programme in the city, Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust (BYST) is launching a mentor development programme to inculcate entrepreneurship.

From a meagre 1,400 today (who they have supported) the organisation wants to increase the number of entrepreneurs to 1 lakh.
 
For this purpose six mentor chapters will be launched in Pune for urban and rural areas on Monday.

The areas include Pimpri-Chinchwad, M G Road, Hinjewadi, Swargate, Saswad village and Urulikanchan.

These chapters focus on entrepreneurship development in the areas through mentoring.

Till today, BYST has supported and mentored over 1,500 entrepreneurs in India and has 3,000 mentors on its rolls spread across six regions — Delhi, Faridabad, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune and rural Maharashtra. BYST says these will create one million jobs and wealth over $ 1 billion.

The organisation, supported by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), aims to build a pool of 30,000 trained and accredited mentors and around one lakh entrepreneurs.

indianexpress:  With an eye on giving an impetus to the state’s wine industry, the Maharashtra State Grape Growers’ Association has sought a 20 per cent subsidy in sales tax on wine exports from the country, from the Union Government.

The demand will be raised at their annual conference on Saturday at Market Yard to be attended by Union Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, Union Commerce minister Jairam Ramesh and state Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil.
 
“The association will also ask the Union Government to relax taxes on the machinery to be imported for the wine industry,” said J M Khilari, president of the association here. The association will also demand benefits accorded to industries.

The association has further lamented the extended power cuts affecting grape production and have demanded a power supply from express feeders.

indianexpress: First it was night school topper Mazhar Khan Pathan who couldn’t secure admission to an engineering diploma course. Now handicapped category topper Swapnali Barge too faces an uncertain future. While she may have crossed the first roadblock by securing admission to a junior college, her parents lack funds for completing her studies.

Swapnali appeared for the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) board examination, the results of which were announced in June this year. She is afflicted by polio and topped the physically handicapped category in the Pune division with 89.53 per cent, a feat she achieved without help from any coaching class.

Swapnali showed promise right from her kindergarten days, said her mother Varsha. She studied at the Laxmibai Tapkir Vidyalaya at Kalewadi. With such high scores, Swapnali has been able to get admission to the Jain Junior College at Chinchwad. But her parents are now concerned about how to pay her fees throughout the year. Her father Ramesh is a tempo driver and her mother a housewife. They have now appealed to the public for funds.

Swapnali has two elder sisters, Gauri and Deepali. While Gauri is now working as a nurse, Deepali completed her standard XII examination this year and is studying at the Government Polytechnic.

“Although she was a topper in the SSC exam, Deepali scored 70 per cent in standard XII. Hence she had to rely on her SSC marks and get into a diploma course for engineering at the Government Polytechnic, as she could not get into a full-time degree course,” said Varsha.

indianexpress: The Bombay High Court order of August 8 with regard to the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Pune-based child rights activist Girish Godbole on the pathetic condition of children in institutional care or observation homes provides a ray of hope for these hapless children. For, the High Court has ordered the principal secretaries of the departments of women and child development as well as social justice and social assistance to file affidavits in four weeks’ time giving detailed reports regarding the same.

There are around 50,000 such children who’re tucked away in 654 observation homes in Maharashtra. Despite a Supreme Court order that juvenile justice cases be closed in three years time, there are children who’ve been incarcerating in these ‘homes’ for more than a decade, with many of them turning adults in confinement.

The bench comprising JN Patel and AA Sayed has stated that they fail to understand why the state requires such a long time for obtaining the report as it had “already appointed a board consisting of eminent persons, some of who are public officials at the helm of the affairs and the authorities in the districts are expected to submit the reports regularly in respect of the affairs of children homes and juvenile homes and this data is very much available with the concerned principal secretaries of the departments.”

Godbole, an activist who was working with Save the Children, an NGO in the area of child rights, wrote a letter on October 19, 2005 complaining about the conditions of children homes after many reports appeared in certain sections of the media. On July 13 2006, he received a letter from the High Court that the said letter has been converted into a suo motu writ petition and later on July 25 it was converted into a PIL.

As there was no further progress for a year, Godbole wrote a letter to the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court last month following which the case was taken for hearing on August 8. “I hope that the provisions of Juvenile Justice Act 2000 will be implemented in spirit and letter after this order,” Godbole told Newsline on Friday.