Girls clinch top positions in Naat competition for special persons

MANSEHRA: The girls clinched top positions as the 6th Khyber Pakhtunkhwa-Punjab All Disabilities Naat Competition held here on Saturday.

The Right to Live, a non-governmental organisation working for the rights of visually impaired people, organised the competitions wherein a total of 18 male and female contestants, 11 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 7 from Punjab, participated. Sahibzada Jawad Al-Faizi and Adil Quraishi led the panel of judges, who decided names of winners at the end of competitions.

Saba Pervez from Abbottabad and Quratul Ain from Rawalpindi clinched first and runner-up positions, respectively, while Zamir Ahmad from Mansehra bagged the third position.

Speaking on the occasion, MPA Momina Basit, the chairperson of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly’s standing committee on social welfare, said that government would soon establish a special education centre for persons with disabilities in Mansehra.

“We have been ensuring that PWD are being appointed at posts fixed for them at public sectors departments and

pass on all such incentives and relief packages announced by successive governments for them in the province,” said Ms Basit.

Speaking on the occasion, Mohammad Bilal, the chairman of Right to Live, who himself is visually impaired, stated that the 2 percent employment quota of PWDs was being usurped in Hazara division.

“We want the government to constitute a committee to probe such ambiguities in appointments of all public sector departments and those responsible for such fraud should be taken to justice under relevant laws,” said Bilal.

Unhygienic milk wasted, adulterators held

The district administration and food department, in a joint operation on Saturday, have arrested over a dozen adulterators and wasted a large quantity of unhygienic milk. A joint team led by Assistant Commissioner Ali Sher and Assistant Food Controller Shaukat Sultan, intercepted vehicles through which milk was being supplied to commercial and domestic consumers in the city and its suburbs.

Sultan told reporters that milk weighing hundreds of kilograms was thrown in drain after it was proven injurious to health through a mobile milk laboratory that had arrived in Mansehra from Peshawar. “The food department has zero-tolerance for adulterators and vendors who mix chemicals in milk and thus play with the lives of people,” said Sultan.