In Brief

Meeting of MC house to be held on November 27
The meeting of general house of the Municipal Corporation will be held on November 27 with 25 items on its agenda. The items include providing jobs on compassionate grounds to family members of employees who have died on the job and promotion of employees among others.

The meeting will be held in the evening and the councillors of the opposition party are likely to take up the development issues because as per their claims,work is being done on pick and choose basis with step-motherly treatment being meted out to wards represented by Congress councillors. The meeting will be held after a gap of two-and-a-half months while as per rules monthly meetings should be conducted every month.

PAU inks pact with Manila institute
The Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) and International Rice Research Institute in Manila have agreed to continue their existing collaboration in agricultural research and training. Under the existing agreement which was executed on November 18,2004,the scientific programme involving exchange of scientists between the two institutes progressed successfully and a significant push was received by the mandated areas of collaboration. The amended memorandum of agreement (MOA) was signed on November 16 at IRRI in Manila to facilitate and harmonise the agricultural research and training collaboration between the two institutes. In addition to the existing collaborative activity between IRRI and PAU,the collaboration will be extended to five different areas including: production techniques for irrigated rice,aerobic rice and hybrid rice; access to putative C4 germplasm; wide hybridisation and allele mining for key productivity and plant protection traits; advanced areas in genomics and genetic transformation; and direct seeded rice and natural resource management technologies. Under the agreement,the collaboration will be for a period of five years and is further extendable on mutual agreement.

Water scarcity in BRS Nagar
he residents of L-block of Bhai Randhir Singh Nagar are facing water scarcity for the past 20 days because of the defunct tubewell in the area. The residents have often complained about the non-functional tubewell but the plea has fallen on deaf ears. The residents gave a two-day ultimatum to the officials after which they plan to stage a protest.

Meeting on property tax held
A meeting chaired by additional commissioner KP Brar was held on Monday morning regarding the implementation of property tax on residential properties. Brar said,“As of now,we have no idea about implementation of the tax,but we have sent a sample of assessment of the property tax to the state government. The sample includes collector rate for a posh area,a middle-segment area on per square yard basis. The rest is for the government to decide.”