News

indianexpress: Even as Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited (PMPML) officials agree that there are over 50 routes in the city where there is a shortage of buses, around 100 buses are standing at the depot for want of drivers. Meanwhile, the company is planning to hire around 200 buses from contract operators in the coming months, saying it is more cost efficient.

“We need drivers, we have vacancies which we want to fill,” said Chairman and Managing Director of PMPML S B Patil. During June and July this year 88 drivers retired from the company. There were recruitments in the last two months, said a PMPML officer. “We expect the recruitments to be over by the end of the month. Around 15 days to a month will be spent in training these drivers, after which they will join the force,” he said.

“Around 100 buses are standing by for lack of drivers. Besides this, around 50 are always there at the depot for maintenance,” said Chief Engineer, Sunil.M.Burse. In future, the company is hoping that the number of buses that are sent for maintenance will come down. Clearly, that will require more drivers. Fresh recruitments are also expected to add costs to the company.

Meanwhile, the company will be hiring around 200 buses in three months time to do away with the need of hiring drivers . “In a government institution, one bus requires 8-9 employees. Private operators can get the same work done with three employees. This will reduce our costs,” said the PMPML chief.

indianexpress: Despite starting operations in mid-October, city’s first mechanised parking system, a forty metre tall towering structure, standing on the premises of Sambhaji Park on J M Road, is not finding many takers owing to the alternative roadside parking facility available on the same road. Considering this, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) is holding talks with the traffic police to declare one side of J M Road, a ‘no parking’ area.

The tower constructed by Ram Ratna Infrastructure Pvt Ltd (RRIPL) has space to accommodate 80 cars. But despite being a user-friendly system, people seem to prefer the roadside parking more. The parking charges for a four-wheeler, for both the roadside as well as the mechanised parking system is same- Rs 5 per hour.

When contacted, director of the RRIPL, S G Mulchandani said, “The system started operations on October 15. On weekdays, 70 to 80 cars use this facility a day, while over the weekend, the number goes up to 150 a day. Even though we are getting a good response, the roadside parking facility present on this road is a kind of hindrance to the growth of mechanised parking. Until now, about 2000 cars have used this system.”

PMC additional city engineer, Srinivas Bonala said, “We have brought this issue to the notice of the traffic police in our co-ordination meeting and have discussed about removing the pay-and-park system and making one side of the road, a no parking zone, which will help the mechanised parking system.”

indianexpress: The merged entity Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited (PMPML) is again trying what the old Pune Municipal Transport (PMT) could not achieve twice — trying to auction six route corridors to private operators, with some additional incentives. ‘‘We have got no response yet. In the next two-three days, we will issue another advertisement in the papers with relaxed rules,’’ said Chairman and Managing Director S B Patil.

He said that that the additional incentives might include concessions in charges or fare to convince operators to come forward for atleast one or two of the routes. ‘‘We want to auction all the six routes. The main problem is that almost 50 per cent of the passengers are pass holders because of which private operators are not confident of making money. We are discussing with our officers to see how we can reimburse the operators. We are making a loss, but we will see that the private operators do not make a loss,’’ said Patil.

For every bus, Patil said that the company had to employ eight to nine people while the private operators could make do with two or three. ‘‘They will be more cost efficient and increase margins,’’ he said.

Out of the 213 bus routes, the company makes a profit on around 40 routes, while around 10-15 routes do not even recover the diesel costs. A PMPML official said that the company does not recover costs for the 45 buses reserved for school children. ‘‘When we tried to raise the fare, there was a morcha in front of the office,’’ he said. Patil added that the corridors on offer for auction were a mixture of profit and loss making routes.

indianexpress: Taking its campaign of exposing the list of bogus ration cardholders one step forward, Pune District collectorate officers have scrapped the licences of two fair price shops in Yerawada area and cancelled 270 ration cards as they were deemed to be bogus in nature.
 
Surprise checks conducted in 500 households in the E-zone of the Yerawada area covering Mundhwa, Keshavnagar, Chandannagar and Nagar Road, showed that over 50 per cent of the people possessed bogus ration cards in the area. District Supply Officer Snehal Barge has cancelled these ration cards immediately and investigations are on to find out how these ration cards were issued in the first place. “When our officers visited the area, there were many cases of forged documents as well false addresses,’’ she said.

Two shops at Nagpur Chawl and Chandan Nagar were found charged with malpractices in kerosene supply and the licenses of these fair price shops have been cancelled, said Barge. “There were a lot of complaints by the people and we found that the shops were not maintaining the necessary records,’’ she said.

A squad has been formed to conduct such surprise checks in various areas so that a foolproof system is in place, said additional collector Vasant Vaidya. After Yerawada, the squad will be conducting checks in other parts of the city.

indianexpress: The Rs 40,000 arrears the state owes Prashant Gaonkar (name changed), a head constable with the Government Railway Police (GRP) in Mumbai, could have helped him pay the fees of his daughter’s medical coaching classes. He is now planning to borrow from moneylenders at an exorbitant rate.

And Gaonkar is not alone. He is among 3,500 GRP officials who have not received refreshment allowance for the past three years — a GRP personnel is eligible for a refreshment allowance of Rs 30 per day if he works for more than 10 hours a day, which a majority of them end up doing.

“By putting in extra hours, I had dreamt of using the additional money for my daughter’s education. But all I have now is refusals from the clerks and endless delays,” says Gaonkar.

“The state government has not released the funds citing fiscal constraints. The total arrears now stand at around Rs 5 crore,” says Commissioner for Railways A K Sharma.

The state government’s inability to pay arrears has affected the morale of GRP personnel, especially after the 7/11 blasts as they have been putting in extra hours for patrolling of stations and yards. In fact, most of them end up working for more than 12 hours a day.

“We are told that it’s the fault of the people at the clerical level. They do not maintain our records properly. It’s disheartening and frustrating to see the papers coming back for filling queries regarding work hours. And the amount is never paid even after filling in all the details,” said a constable requesting anonymity.

techtree: Transcend’s new, high capacity, 250GB StoreJet 2.5 SATA portable hard disk drive (HDD) is now available in the country.

StoreJet 2.5 is compact, and features a stylishly designed polished Aluminum case with contoured edges. With a high-speed USB 2.0 interface, the HDD provides data transfer rates up to 480 Mbits per second.

Featuring “OneTouch” auto-backup button, the HDD bundles Transcend’s StoreJet Elite 2.0 software, offering backup scheduling, security, and power saving functions.

The HDD supports all commonly used operating systems, like Windows 2000/XP/Vista, Mac OS 9.0/OS X, and Linux Kernel 2.4.2 or later.

The StoreJet 2.5 SATA is available in colorful polished aluminum cases, including Titanium (120GB), Blue (160GB), and Silver (250GB).

The StoreJet 2.5 SATA is also available without a hard drive, as a sleek external enclosure in Silver, Blue, and Red.

techtree: With increasing use of digital photography, Epson has launched two inkjet photo multi-function printers (MFP) — the Stylus Photo RX610, and the Stylus Photo RX690.

Meant for photography enthusiasts, the two new printers are capable of printing, scanning, and copying; and feature a Micro Piezo print head and Advanced Variable Sized Droplet Technology (VSDT) for controlling speed and quality in printing.

Micro Piezo ensures consistency during prolonged printing, while Advanced VSDT intelligently manages ink droplet sizes and resolutions up to 5760 dots per inch (dpi).

The two printers bundle Photo Enhance and Portrait Enhance software, of which the former is capable of automatically correcting common digital photo flaws, and the latter is capable of detecting and improving face definition and skin radiance for a more natural look.

With a 2.5-inches LCD screen that can be tilted, the RX690 offers A4 prints, and has a copy speed of up to 40 pages per minute for both Black and color text.

The RX690 comes with dual paper trays for a combined paper holding capacity of up to 300 (150 for front feed, and 150 for rear feed) A4 sheets. For double-sided printing, users can use the auto-duplexer. Draft 4R photo prints can be printed in as little as 12 seconds.

techtree: Netgear India has announced availability of its Digital Entertainer HD (EVA8000), a set-top digital media receiver.

The EVA8000 can stream BitTorrent movie downloads from PCs; play Internet video, and give RSS news feeds, weather, and radio feeds directly; control PC-PVR recordings remotely; and access iPods and other handheld media devices.

The device has powerful search capability for high-definition television to display media files and Internet content streamed from Windows as well as Mac computers, network storage devices, and USB media devices.

It can automatically discover HD movies, TV shows, music files, and personal photos on a home network, across multiple PCs, and organizes these into a single media library displayed on a TV, without the need for media server software on the PC.

With the included remote, users can search the entire media library by multiple criteria, including title, actor, date, genre, or thumbnail images.

According to Netgear, a High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) port can display video resolution up to 1080p on big-screen TVs, and transmit full digital surround sound to the digital audio receiver.

The EVA8000 includes an on-screen TV wizard and PC installation software for setup, and the included Windows PC software enables users to listen to music from iTunes or view YouTube videos, and access their PC desktop from the living room.

Multiple receivers can work in concert throughout a home, so users can pause a video in one room, and resume it in another, or synchronize music playback for a whole-home listening experience.

msnbc: A vast new energy supply in hard-to-tap older oil fields may be generated simply by feeding fertilizer to some deep-dwelling, gas-making microbes, new research suggests.

Canadian and English researchers were able to convert oil into usable methane in small glass tubes during two years of lab research, instead of a process that takes tens of thousands of years underground. The next step is to do it in real oil fields.

The new method takes advantage of the natural process that occurs when microbes slowly degrade oil into methane, the chief ingredient in natural gas.

The researchers report their experiment in a study published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“You’re talking a very substantial amount of energy,” said study co-author Steve Larter, a University of Calgary petroleum geologist. “It’s potentially a game changer if it can be demonstrated.”

Proving that it could work on a large scale, economically and in real world conditions is the big unknown, the researchers concede.

Larter said it was hard to come up with just how much energy they could produce, but speculated it could be near the equivalent of the world’s conventional oil reserves

msnbc: No one would set a scrapbook filled with pictures and memories on the tombstone of a loved one. But what about a high-tech, weatherproof version, with digital images powered by a solar cell?

That innovation is available now — but finding customers so far has proven slow going.

“I haven’t sold any,” said Doug Ellis of Riverview Monuments, who has been offering the so-called “serenity panel” system for about $2,000 since February.

Many customers tell him “That is not for me,” he said, adding, “I think the Wausau area is a little more conservative yet.”

The panel mounts to the front of the gravestone and pays tribute to the deceased in color pictures, words, music and even videos. It’s all from a small memory chip inside a device that opens like the front cover of a book. Vidstone LLC, a company with offices in Florida and Colorado, developed the serenity panel about two years ago.

Cheri Lucking, Vidstone’s national sales director in Aurora, Colorado, said the company has about 100 dealers across the country, including two in Minnesota, four in Illinois and seven in Michigan, and one in the United Kingdom. Ellis is the only one in Wisconsin.

“We don’t release our sales figures,” she said. “It is not a huge number at the moment.”

Maria Schlitzberger, office manager of Schlitzberger and Daughters Monument Co. in Houston, said her company has sold one serenity panel in a year,