RAHIM YAR KHAN: Livestock department officials on Tuesday night sealed a factory for allegedly preparing ‘spurious’ cotton seed cake of animal feed near Shahbazpur Road.

Livestock Additional Director Tahir Butt told Dawn that a team headed by Deputy Director Dr Tahir Gulzar raided Malik Oil Mills near Chak 72-NP and recovered 16,000 kilogram ‘spurious’ cotton seed cake. He said when the team checked the entire stock of the mills, huge quantity of substandard cotton seed, waste of cotton ginning and textile mills, wood powder and dirt was in the inventory.

The team collected the samples of the material and sent to [animal feed] laboratory in Lahore.

Police also arrested two employees of the factory who told the team that Malik Rab Nawaz of Bahawalpur and Muhammad Waseem of Sadiqabad were running the factory.

According to Dr Tahir Gulzar, it was his fifth attempt to act against Malik Oil Mills but its ‘influential’ owners had opened it again in the past.

He said substandard and injurious-to-health colours and chemicals were being used in the manufacturing of cotton seed cake. Not only cattle but humans were also getting sick due to use of the cake, he said.

SCHOOL: The government pilot secondary school will be converted into a model school of the district with well equipped science labs and sports grounds.

This was said by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf MNA Javed Iqbal Warriach during a surprise visit to the school here on Wednesday.

Warraich visited the school after getting various complaints by students and teachers about the dilapidated building.

School headmaster Sajid Ikraam briefed the MNA that the building had been established in 1920 for the use of British army. Later in 1947, the building was under the control of Pakistan army and in 1959 it was properly handed over to the education department. The school had started in 1959.

Ikram said the school was facing multiple problems. He said its main water tank was so old that seepage appeared in walls and foundations of 99-year-old building. He said all the roads on the school premises were broken and not repaired for the last 30 years due to unavailability of funds. He said a contractor left the work of laying sewer lines 10 years back and now sewage water accumulated in the school. Science labs were without experimental material.

Ikraam said four years back a team of Punjab DG sports visited the school grounds for their betterment but no further step was taken. After the briefing, Warriach assured the headmaster that he would get maximum funds for his native school.

Published in Dawn, January 31st, 2019