The Chief Secretary Punjab, Salman Siddique, has lately given orders to the secretary P&D to probe into the allegations of alleged corruption, abuse of authority, irregularity and violation of merit policy of the government by the authorities of the Emergency Rescue Service 1122. The service was initiated at the cost of millions of rupees from taxpayers' money a couple of years back. The chief minister calls it as the first trained ambulance service of international standard in the province which has a qualified staff and is equipped with modern medical facilities. The service, he says, is playing a pivotal role in providing first aid.

Sources in the P&D say the secretary P&D has sought para wise comments from the Rescue 1122 head Dr. Rizwan Naseer who happens to be a close relative of one of the top men in the government and has been facing criticism over, what his detractors say a lack of credentials on his part to head such an organisation. Ahsanullah Waqas, an MPA and a senior member of the Muttaheda Majlis-e-Amal, has also tabled a motion in the Assembly asking the government to come up with a reply in the next Assembly's session with regard to what he describes as the sorry state of affairs prevailing in the Emergency Service.

Talking to TNS, Waqas says that in the absence of an effective mechanism of check and balance things are rapidly going from bad to worse in the Rescue 1122. He fears if things were not set right at once, this project might meet the fate of other government projects. He says he has submitted to the government a report on the alleged misappropriation of funds, over 200 illegal recruitments in sheer violation of the merit, misuse of authority -- of vehicles etc -- by some of the officers of the Rescue 1122.

The Rescue 1122 was launched by the Punjab government initially in the Provincial metropolis with the aim to provide efficient and effective rescue and transportation to the victims of accidents, emergencies and disasters.

Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi has already ordered an extension of the pilot project of Ambulance and Emergency Service (Rescue 1122) to other areas of the province. Chief minister also approved a plan to extend the facility to Rawalpindi, Multan, Faisalabad, Sargodha, Bahawalpur, Dera Ghazi Khan and Gujranwala. He also gave his node to the establishment of Emergency Training Academy over an area of 250 kanals near Thokar Niaz Baig for imparting modern training to the rescue staff so that their services could also be made available to the people of other districts of the province.

According to the sources, the Chief Secretary Punjab has ordered an inquiry into the affairs of the Emergency Service on a report in which it has been alleged that a nexus of some officers enjoying prized posts in the Emergency Service is allegedly involved in misuse of authority and irregularities being committed on large-scale in the organisation. It has been further learnt that Deputy Project Director (grade 18) Naeem Zarar is facing a case in which he has been accused of embezzling funds to the tune of over Rs.40 lakhs of Edhi Trust where he was once an employee earlier.

Zarar was recruited by the Edhi Trust a couple of years back and was deputed at its G-10 Islamabad Centre as in charge Edhi Ambulance Services. During this period, an amount of Rs.40 lakhs was found missing from the Trust fund. The trust got an FIR (No.262) lodged against Naeem Zarar with Police Station Golra Sharif. The accused confessed to the crime and in two different letters to the Maulana Abdus Sattar Edhi, the accused and his mother promised to pay back the money to the organisation at the earliest. Later on the accused got bail from the court and arrived in Lahore and somehow landed the coveted post in the Rescue 1122 -- tasked with the important job of procuring office items, maintenance of vehicles and allotment of fuel .The job involves a monthly expenditure of between Rs 20 million to Rs 50 million. Recently he was also selected for a course in England.

The sources says that it has also been investigated that how another officer, a retired major, was selected as an assistant director Fire and Rescue in BPS 17 in November 2005 despite the fact that he does not possess any experience of firefighting or rescue service. Moreover, how he was promoted to BPS 18 in a short span of eight months. He was also blessed with the charge of training officer, Rescue 1122 academy.

The report reveals that each time the vehicles (ambulances and medicines) were purchased from two firms. Furthermore the employees of Rescue 1122 were paid much less than their announced salary. The employees are charged heavy fines without any documentary announcements and the amounts collected are not deposited in the government treasury. Moreover, the heavy amounts donated to the Rescue by various sources are also reported to have been shifted to the account an NGO.

Director-General Rescue 1122 Dr. Rizwan rebuts the charges of corruption and misuse of authority. He says it is with sheer dedication that his team has made this organisation a role model for others to follow. He says some disgruntled elements are bent upon maligning him and his organisation.

Enumerating his list of successes , he says the average response time of 7 minutes in a city of over 8 million people with only 14 ambulances , the rescue of over 31,000 people in an emergency in two years , indigenous manufacture of rescue vehicles as per international standards, training of emergency paramedics and rescuers for the first time in Pakistan are some achievements of the Rescue 1122.

With an aim to ensuring sustainable human resource development in the long neglected but essential field of emergency and disaster management, Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi has recently announced the establishment of Emergency Services Academy at Niaz Baig, Lahore, for the training of emergency staff of emergency services and hospitals.

The academy will train personnel for emergency services like emergency ambulance, rescue and fire services, and emergency paramedics for hospitals. It will also impart training in emergency and disaster management to officers and other staff who will subsequently train personnel of non-governmental and private organisations.

The sources in the P&D Department, Punjab, however, say the proposed place of the Academy at Thokar Niaz Baig was declared unsafe and risky for the construction of academy building by the experts as it is located on the riverbed of Ravi. A thorough written report was submitted to the secretary P&D some months ago, but on the insistence of the management of Rescue 1122 the proposed site has been handed over to them for the construction of the various offices of the academy.

Temporarily, Emergency Services Academy on a modest level has already been started at the former LOS Ichhra premises from April 3 this year. The first batch of Fire- Rescuers has passed out from the Academy and training of emergency staff, recruited for Rawalpindi and Faisalabad, is under way.

Major Amjad (retired), the commander of the academy, says he training of the first batch of rescuers was a great challenge as there was no trained emergency staff even in emergency departments of teaching hospitals and pre-hospital emergency services like Fire, Rescue & Ambulance Services were virtually non-existent.

"The new rescuers were recruited and trained to provide swift response to emergencies, rescue and emergency medical treatment to the victims of emergencies. Specialised training was practised repeatedly and rescuers were finally sent to emergency departments of teaching hospitals for gaining experience in managing emergency patients. Training material developed by the Punjab Emergency Service (Rescue 1122) supports the practical training.

"Theory and practice based life support training includes life saving skills like cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, protocol for shifting of spinal injury patients and maintenance of intravenous line. These skills are practised again and again by rescuers in the labs established at the Academy," he says.

Dr. Rizwan Naseer, Director-General Punjab Emergency Service, emphasises importance of the training says the success of the service is due to the quality training imparted to rescuers according to international standards. He says establishment of the academy is a historic initiative in starting quality training of emergency staff for the first time in Pakistan.

He says the academy is also in process of getting international accreditation to ensure quality of training according to international standards. Emergency officers have been trained as master trainers by Strathclyde Fire-Rescue Service, Glasgow, U.K.

The story needs to be told over and over again until we know the answer to the question: How do people manage in the face of the ever rising prices?

The facts reveal nothing. Estimates say there has been a 100 per cent increase in the prices of household items in the last five years. Salaries have hardly seen an upsurge.

The News on Sunday talked to various stakeholders -- farmers, middlemen, wholesale dealers, shopkeepers and consumers for an update on prices, and the verdict was that it could not get any tougher than this.

"We are spending huge amounts of money on buying seeds, fertilizers and other material and services needed for cultivating vegetables," says Rashid Muhammad, a farmer. "We use tube-wells to irrigate fields and thus the costs go up every time there is an increase in oil or electricity charges."

Rashid has five acres of land from which to earn a living for his family and complains that, after putting in four months of hard labour, he often runs into losses. "We should be given subsidy on seed, fertilizer and pesticide, as are farmers in other countries," he says, indicating that the measure can bring down inflation and absolving the farmers of playing any active role in hiking the prices.

The much-maligned middleman also pleads not guilty to the charge. "We charge a small commission for the facilities that we provide to the wholesale dealers by bringing the vegetables from the remote area to the city," says Muhammad Afzal Papo, a middleman, operating from his base in Lahore. "But it is not profit always. It can be loss as well."

According to Papo's own calculations, he makes huge investments in the business. "We pay the farmers in advance and are entitled to earn reasonable profits on this 'service'. We are not influential enough to have a bearing on prices." Consumers blame sabzi mandi traders for minting money at their expense. In their turn however these traders also maintain that while they may be able to at times make a 100 per cent profit on a variety, there are days when they have to get rid of their merchandise in a hurry at throw-away price.

Chaudhry Azhar, a wholesale dealer in Sabzi Mandi Lahore, says a 40-kilogram sack of potatoes is selling for Rs 800 in the wholesale market while the retail price for potatoes per kg is Rs 23 to Rs 25 -- a profit of between Rs 3 to Rs 5 on a single kg.

Similarly, tomatoes are sold at Rs 120 per 5 kg in the wholesale and at Rs 150 per 5 kg in the retail market.

Azhar says the prices of vegetable may vary according to quality, but that is done under licence from the government which is the sole price arbiter.

The retailers pick up the story form where the wholesale dealers leave it. They say they have are under fire from consumers for no fault of their own just because they happen to be in direct contact with the end users. "We make between Rs 2 to Rs 10 per kg depending on a particular variety of vegetable," says Nazar Hussain, a shopkeeper in Purani Anarkali, before he enters a philosophical discussion about people's choices of vegetable etc. "Some people don't care what the prices are while others would want good stuff at cheap rates. But I agree that prices vary but in the bazaars established by the government."

"Rs 3000 cannot fetch today what Rs 1500 would three years ago," says Tahmina Qaiyoom, a resident of Shalamar Town. She is implicitly laying a claim on a Nobel in Economics when she says that she spends Rs 90 to prepare one meal for her five-member family. Bravo.

While most of us sleep in nice cozy beds in our homes with lights off, there are those who fall asleep when and where it comes. As winter approaches more people move from green belts to dry places which most of the time

 land the homeless in thoroughfares. There are those who sleep on benches, on the triangle shaped dividers on main roads with lamp posts over their head and a pair of slippers underneath it for fear of losing them. How they sleep at a place where traffic never really ceases, is something one wonders about. Its nature's way of dealing with our needs.

Thousands of people can be seen sleeping and sitting on green belts, dividers and sheds because they don't have a home in Lahore. They are in the city to earn a living and what they earn is not sustainable in a city where rents of rooms and houses are going up crazily.

These homeless men are daily wagers, mostly unskilled labour, driven to seek work in the provincial capital because there is no work in villages and whatever work is there does not pay enough for survival. Many families have migrated from villages only on this count in the last one decade while a great number of men have ventured to come here looking for work. There are those who say they would have died had they not moved to the city. Still daily wages need to be redefined.

Don't really know if it's a sign of plain ageing or only a temporary phase when being opinionated sounds nice to one's own ears, but the eid this year was insightful. In so many ways. For once, I realised how blessed the newspaper people were. Getting our usual share of tea and cigarettes in a nearly public office without any guilt strings attached is something I've begun to cherish like never before.

Come iftari time and the ritual was as religiously observed as the defiance, just a short while ago. So iftar in the office was equally colourful for we weren't short of the God-fearing ones. That was the time the true merit of desi snacks struck. Who in the world could ever conceive delicacies like dahi baras, fruit chaat, samosas and the heavenly pakoras to be followed by tea... and no menu change for the next twenty nine days. I mean incredible! What else?

Though I must concede that defiance and observance (of iftari) left one a bit heavy at the end of the day. So sheer defiance is the lesson for next year.

Then came the usual moon-sighting controversy and the equally predictable cribbing and cries. Enough of it, I thought. That was when I began to convince everyone around. 'Be a sport'. 'Let's have as many eids as we can.' 'What difference does it make if people in NWFP had it a day or two before us?' 'They had an Eid after all, didn't they and so would we?' 'The more, the merrier.'

The overly optimistic declarations fell on deaf ears, it seems. Perhaps a little more research was required. I found that long before the Ruet-e-Hilal Committee came into being, a relative of ours working in Mardan came home in Punjab for eid having already celebrated there. Past wasn't another country, after all. And then there were the 'scientific' types who argued for a ready calendar based on scientific calculations and so on.

Subject-starved television anchors were quick to pick the issue. Perhaps, that's where wisdom is. The Met Office came up with a brilliant scientific explanation which fell just short of a solution. Scientifically, the officer said on one of the channels, there ought to have been a moon on the 29th of Ramzan but it wasn't sighted. There went science. He also questioned the shahadats of people who claimed to have seen it in NWFP. So that left us with the Ruet-e-Hilal Committee and then as many eids as we had.

Why don't they, for a change, listen to me. Just let it be. It's for some time that eid is not just a day or two but one whole week. So it doesn't matter much in a weekful of celebration, does it?

The images around eid are nothing but a testimony to tolerance and pluralism that goes unappreciated as we go on grumbling over everything. The bearded, toothless face of an old man in Peshawar who is exercising his freedom to say his eid prayers when he chooses to is surely a sign that it is possible to live by one's belief in this land of ours. It is a pity that the image-builders have never thought of using such photos to promote Pakistan's image as a democratic country abroad.

Where the current incumbents fail, their disgraced predecessors are up to the task. Look at picture No 2 in this eid gallery of ours and figure out for yourself the commitment of a certain Shahbaz Sharif to the idea of enlightened moderation. The exile may have deprived him of pleasures that he must be so used to drawing out of his hectic schedule back home, but to borrow an expression from elder brother's sister, Benazir Bhutto, there is after all a 'silver lining' in the clouds. He can at least go to the eid congregation complete with a suit and tie. What is more he offers a choice to the champions of moderate enlightenment who, by all indications, have not shut their door on him.

In the third picture, Shahid Khan Afridi is shown leading prayers after a practice session in Chandigarh, amid all these directives from the new Pakistan Cricket Board bosses who are so keen to convince the players that their basic job is to be seen playing rather than praying. The thing to note for the board and others is not what these players are doing, but just how many of them are sitting behind the prayer leader. There are a total of 12 of them, including coach Waqar Younis. That makes a team. Given that in our own offices people wonder why London is having two eids and then go on to hold three different jamaats on the same rooftop, this picture is reflective of unity in the team.

Democracy, moderation, unity...when the three are there, responsibility cannot be far behind. This in my book is the image of the days preceding eid. At the first glance it reveals little else than the feet of a few men standing behind and with their backs to a screen but then the message starts to unveil. It is a picture of two enclosures outside the Railway Station erected for the convenience of passengers and others looking for a quiet bite inside roza hours during Ramzan.

The true significance of this image lies in the time of its appearance in the newspaper. It could have been there in the early part of Ramzan when the rozadars are so curious to find out just who is not fasting and when there is so much demand for such photos. Since such things do not go unnoticed, I have a feeling that those responsible for the showing of this particular image now could easily have done so a few weeks earlier -- only at the risk of endangering the bread and butter of those running these food enclosures and those partaking of the facility. They held on to the image until a day before the eid, when there was little risk of backlash amid all these speculations about the eid moon. Good work, gentlemen.