Shanti Kunj invites you to its open-air gymnasium

Working out on a regular basis is very important for everyone with today’s sedentary lifestyle. It helps in keeping you active and fit throughout. Working out in regular gymnasiums and at your home might get boring at times and also suffocating. Therefore, it is best to work out in the open air, inhaling the fresh air and enjoying the greenery and scenic beauty around you.

Chandigarh gives you an amazing option to shift your workout in the open air with its first Open air gym at Shanti kunj, which is located in Sector 16 in the city. Also, this facility is open for all and is free of cost. It is a tremendous move by the authorities to motivate people to start working out and lead a healthy life. This installation is a motivation from the open-air gymnasium at Lodhi Garden in New Delhi. As it is located out in the park, the machines at the gym are manually operated and do not require electricity.

The cost of installation of this gymnasium is being borne by the Councilor’s Ward Development Fund and is for those who wish to start working out but unable to afford the expensive gymnasiums in the area. Around 10 machines have been purchased to be installed in this open-air facility and the cost incurred for the same is around Rs. 10 Lakhs. It is just the initial installation cost, which is high; otherwise the maintenance cost for this facility is very low.

A number of machines have been installed, keeping in mind different parts of the body,which is generally worked out like manual treadmill, legs shaper and abs shaper. To avoid stealing of the machines by anyone, the authorities have fixed the machines in the ground and they cannot be moved from their place. This facility has been installed at a stage, which was earlier used for cultural functions at Shanti Kunj.

With installation of this facility, people from all age groups will be attracted to come to the park and make use of its facilities, unlike only elderly people who have been the main audience of this place till now. It is also a great step to introduce senior citizens to Gymnaisum, who otherwise feel uncomfortable in going to such facilities. The civic body is also planning to install such facilities in other popular parks of the area and will also be appointing a trainer during peak hours here.

Cycling around on World Health Day

It has been very truly said by someone that ‘Health is Wealth’. Without being healthy, you cant enjoy the wealth you have and nor you can live a happy life. One must be conscious of his/her lifestyle and take a note of what all are his eating habits as these are some of the major factors, which turn into life-threatening diseases.

On World Health Day, The Fortis Escorts Hospital, Amritsar organized a cycling and two-wheeler rally where hundreds of people participated and showed their interest towards leading a healthier lifestyle. The theme of the rally this year was to beat Diabetes. This is one such disease which is either passed down through generations or occurs in ones body due to over intake of sugar and sugar products.

The best way to prevent you from diseases like Diabetes and Thyroid, one must workout regularly, whether it is exercising, walk, jogging, cycling or any other means of workout. This is why the Fortis Escorts Hospital chose cycling as one of the means to take out a rally on World Health Day. Hundreds of people participated in the rally and there were many more who took part in cheering the participants.

Diabetes is such a life-threatening disease that it is already one of the major causes that lead to kidney failures, amputation and blindness around the world. According to World Health Organization, by the year 2030, this will be the seventh leading cause of death worldwide.

Dr. HP Singh, the Medical Director at the hospital and Dr. Pinak Moudgil, Facility Director said that a person prone to Diabetes or one who is suffering from diabetes should go for a 60 minute exercise plan regularly. This can include 30 minutes of walk, 15 minutes of resistance training exercises and some more stretching and relaxing exercises.

Seeing the crowd at the rally, one can imagine how much awareness people have relating to this disease and how motivated everyone seems to be to kick-start the path towards a healthier lifestyle. Cycling, which was the theme of the rally is one of the best exercises that helps one in losing weight, pumping the muscles and even regularizing the sugar levels in the body.

DBC, caring for the needy

Already doing a wonderful job by helping the elderly with their senior citizens home in Doraha, Dream and Beauty Charitable Trust is one of those positive examples of the society who are trying to create a better world for everyone.

After the senior citizens they are not planning to do their bit for the orphans. Not just giving them a good place to live, they will also be grooming them, teaching them and taking care of them to make them self-independent beings. Their initiative for the orphans will be named as ‘Divine Dreams’ and there will be around 50 orphans and destitute children who will be taken care of at this set up.

Dream and Beauty Charitable Trust is an initiative of Anil Monga, from USA, who is a reputed global entrepreneur. He announced his plans to start up this facility for the orphans on the occasion of 20^th Anniversary of the senior citizens home, ‘Heavenly Palace’.

Proper care will be taken of the health and nutrition of the kids and food will be served accordingly, which can help them in leading a healthy and illness-free life. It is an effort to let the kids know that there is someone who cares for them and to reinstate the hope of a bright future in their hearts and minds.

Another effort by the organization for the poor and the less-fortunate is that they are planning to extend the Brahmbhog to nearby slums where they will be providing free healthy food from the automated kitchens of the Heavenly Palace. This programme has till now been serving the migrant labour in Ludhiana with health food everyday since last twenty years and now they are planning to take a it a step further so that more people can have benefits from the same.

Another programme of the DBC trust is named as ‘Margdarshan’, which helps in developing the skills of the youth, helping in educating the girl child and a lot more. Their hospital, Karma Hospital is set up in an area of 14 acres, which helps in treating the villagers and also helps in offering a world-class facility to the senior citizens in Doraha.

Time to save water – World Water Day

From college students to corporates, everyone made their best efforts to spread awareness about saving water on the World Water Day. The students from NSS Units of the SSD Girls College creatively participated in the poster-making and slogan-writing competitions to spread awareness of water saving initiatives on the World Water Day. Ria from the BCom Department bagged the first position, whereas her namesake, Ria Kapoor from BCom Honours secured the second position. Maninder Kaur secured the third place from the MCom department.

To create awareness amongst their employees and their contractual employees Talwandi Sabo Power Limited celebrated the International Day of Forests and the World Water Day and educated the team on the forest, sand water conservation and its usefulness in day-to-day lives. Most of the jobs around the world are related to water, everyone requires it in their personal as well as professional working areas to lead the daily processes. A spokesperson of TSPL said that the theme for the year 2016 is Water and Jobs, which tell us about how the quantity and quality of water being available in the society will affect the workers’ lives and transform economies in a drastic way.

They all participated in a plantation drive, which was organized to mark these environment-friendly days. Approximately, the employees in different parts of the premises planted 450 saplings and these saplings were of neem, pipal, bargad and more medicinally essential trees.

The issue of overflow of water at the overhead water tanks leads to a large amount of wastage and this is the water which can be easily conserved. The team installed float valves in 11 different locations of the toilets in the premises with overhead water tanks. Seminars and discussions were also organized to teach them about easy practices that they can inculcate in their daily lives to prevent wastage of water and turn to environment friendly activities.

The international Day of Forests is celebrated around the world on March 21^st and the World Water Day is being celebrated on the 22^nd March, which was declared by The United Nations General Assembly in the year 1993. Being just a day apart, TSPL officials planned to mark the celebration for both the days together and try to create an environment friendly world around them.

Get your food tested on the spot

These days, it is very difficult to judge whether the food you are having is pure or not. Whether those are the lentils, the vegetables or even milk or water. With industrialization, there are more and more products with adulteration are coming in the way, without taking care of the public’s health.

It is better to switch to Organic food, but that too from a trusted source. But this is not possible for everybody to afford, as it is expensive and not very readily available in all parts of the country. The UT Health Department has devised a nice way to find out whether the food you are eating is adulterated or not. Now you can get your food tested at the comfort of your home. This will help you in knowing what all that you eat in your daily life is adulterated, and to what level.

They are preparing a mobile food-testing laboratory out of an old ambulance of the department. This will go from door to door to test your food. You can get this done at a very cheap cost of just Rs. 30. The lab will take a tour of all the sectors of Chandigarh. It is a great step to make people aware of what they are eating. You can compare different varieties of food that you consume, so that the next time when you are out for grocery shopping, you know what to buy and what not.

The lab will roam around collecting samples from the households and will be available only from Monday to Friday and not on the weekends. Mostly the products, which are being adulterated and have different varieties available in the market, are milk, milk products, oil and water. The aim of this van is to test these products from different households and spread awareness of this hazardous activity being conducted these days. With this instant testing method, the van will give out the results to the residents on the spot and will be available in different sectors, in collaboration with the residents welfare association.

This facility will be available from next week, the department has already recruited two technicians for this activity to be carried out and a driver for the van.

Helping Farmers with Kisan Helplines in Place

The Punjab government does the best of efforts in order to help the farmers who are the most crucial people for not just the state of Punjab, but also for the entire population of India. The farmers of Punjab provide the maximum productivity in the field of agriculture.

Kisan helpline is a major initiative for the welfare of farmers. Kisan helpline is a boon for the farmers. This helpline is available for the service of the farmers of Punjab so that they can get the solutions of their problems right at their homes.

The Kisan helpline number is available for 12 hours from 8 am to 8 pm. The farmers can call on the numbers provided by the government and seek help from the experts on various matters of agriculture from seeking help about new crops to taking expert advice for their farms, the farmers can make the best use of the kisan helpline numbers.

The Punjab government has formulated this service of kisan helpline for the farmers of Punjab to make sure that each and every farmer of the state gets instant help for his problems. Kisan helpline has been working as a very effective means for the farmers of Punjab.

Any farmer can call on the helpline numbers and talk to experts. The functioning of theses helpline numbers are very simple and easy for the kisans. They can call on the given numbers and their calls are recorded immediately. These recorded calls are sent to the experts. They experts examine the whole problem and come up with suitable solutions for the problems. These solutions are conveyed to the farmers on the same day to make sure that no time is wasted. The whole idea of Kisan helpline is to make the tasks of farmers easy. These helpline numbers also convey important messages to the farmers which are of use for their crops and fields.

The initiative of setting up kisan helplines by the Punjab government has been applauded all over the state. The effectiveness of these helpline numbers is commendable. Farmers are benefitted to a great extend because of these helpline numbers. These numbers are for every farmer of the state.

Kisan helplines are available for the service of farmers of Punjab. They ensure that every query is solved with the most immediate effect. These helplines have changed the scenario of farming and cropping in Punjab. This helpline is for multiple purposes.

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Punjab’s Aadhaar journey

Punjab is one of the forerunners to create a repository of Residents’ Aadhaar Demographic information called State Resident Data Hub (SRDH) created to assist line departments in Aadhaar enablement. Currently departments such as education, revenue, transport and food are working for Aadhaar enablement of their services.  Tech savvy Punjab people have come forward in a big way to get access to the new schemes and e-governance.

In Punjab the Aadhaar journey got wings on 23rd June 2010 with the signing of Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of Punjab and Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) that flagged State vide Aadhaar Enrolments. During the first phase of enrolments, state achieved the man month target of enrolling more than one crore residents engaging State as well as non-state machinery. The Phase II commenced in March, 2012 with more than 500 State and Non State Registrar enrolment stations operating to capacity with a target to enrol the entire state by Feb 2014. November 2013 the total site enrolments stand close to 90% of targeted population. Foreseeing the ongoing enrolments to reach saturation gradually, 737 permanent enrolment centres are being set up to benefit the left out population which will also help finish the left out enrolments.

Punjab has always been in the forefront of adopting new technologies and newer things. Little doubt that Punjab has lapped up this scheme. Total enrolled population in Punjab is 2,50,91,071 crores.  To utilise the available resources, the Punjab government has engaged all available resources to reach out to people for 100 per cent inclusion under the scheme.

In Punjab Suwidha Centres with their network spanned across the state geography, have been further engaged for the delivery of e-Aadhaar to ensure easy access to Aadhaar services to the common man.  This has ensured that the citizens get the Aadhar Cards on time and without any doubts of delivery.  It for record that the Government of India has setup Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) with the mandate of providing a unique identity (Aadhaar) number to all residents of India. Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique number which the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is issuing for all residents in India. The number is stored in a centralized database and linked to the basic demographics and biometric information – photograph, ten fingerprints and iris – of each individual.

A portal for citizens

For Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT) where Aadhaar forms the core engine, Punjab has lead the chart at national level by benefit transfers to Aadhaar linked bank accounts through various Govt. Schemes. The UID Punjab has also developed a web based portal to assist in the smooth implementation of (DBT) schemes in Punjab. The portal will standardize the process for the fulfilment of pre-requites for the execution DBT transfers. In Punjab the project is implemented by Registrar, UID Project, and Department of Food and Civil Supplies Punjab. UIDAI proposes on-line identity authentication which have the potential to bring about the transformation in the method of service delivery.

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E-office comes to Punjab

The e-Office envisages transforming conventional Government Offices into more efficient and transparent e-Offices, eliminating huge amounts of paper work.  Indeed it is a much needed step that would revolutionize the working of government offices, must different from the old hackneyed style.

Government of Punjab has computerized all the branches of Deputy Commissioners and the offices of Divisional Commissioners. For Computerization of these offices; National Informatics Centre (NIC) Punjab has been given responsibility of implementation of the e-Office (Electronic Office) software.  The coming up of e-office would do away with need of huge files and paper work. In a way, it would be eco friendly measure and in keeping with environmental protection trends too. It would be a game changer for the people of Punjab as it would bring most needed transparency and efficiency in the delivery of services.

Field Offices Revamped

The NIC Punjab has already completed the assessment of computing infrastructure of various field offices of the State and has submitted the techno-commercial proposal of Rs.41.70 crores. The e-Office product pioneered by National Informatics Centre (NIC) aims to support governance by using in more effective and transparent inter and intra Government Processes.  It would facilitate ease of doing office work and would be a people friendly measure.

Mansa chosen as pilot district

The Mansa district has been selected as a Pilot district for the implementation of e-Office project. The pilot projects in Mansa district shall be completed by October, 2014. After the successful completion of the pilot project, the project shall be rolled out in the remaining districts across State of Punjab.

Focus on Back Office computerization

With a view to provide faster, transparent and efficient services to Citizens, it is suggested that all departments must focus on computerization of their back office workflows in next 3 to 5 years. To facilitate this, e-District state wide roll out project should be implemented in a time bound manner for 47 services planned in its scope. For remaining services, state funding may be provided to achieve the goal of end to end electronic service delivery.

To achieve integrated delivery mechanism for back-end automation, Punjab Government has proposed to identify all G2C services being delivered across the state by various departments using various models of backend work flow. So it has proposed to create one master service matrix so that a strategic plan can be made to further automate and integrate backend workflow of all these services in a phased and planned manner. The government has suggested computerizing the back-end work flow of service in a seamless manner to make all these services inter-operable so that these can be accessed through various channels.

Agriculture dept adopts e-governance

Department of Agriculture, Punjab has initiated to introduce e-Governance by leveraging ICT to provide agriculture related information or data and to improve upon its functioning in order to bring efficiency, transparency and accountability.   Interestingly, the agriculture is the mainstay of majority of people in Punjab and its computerization and introduction of e-governance in agriculture department would be a boon for the farmers.

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MEGA FOOD PARK AT LADHOWAL

Developing Punjab on the economic front has always been the priority of the state government. The government is making sure that big companies come and invest in the state so that the youth of Punjab can get the best of job opportunities in the state.

The Board of Directors of Punjab Agro Industries Corporation Ltd (PAIC) under the chairmanship of Amrik Singh Aliwal, approved the setting up of a mega food park. The park would be set up at a cost of Rs. 140.5 crores.

The Union Ministry of Food Processing Industries had already given an in-principle approval for the project. The cost of the project would be met through a mix of the PAIC’s equity (Rs. 30.5 crores), term loan (Rs. 60 crores) and MOFPI grant (Rs. 50 crores).

The state government wants to speed the development activities in the state in every front.

The land survey at the site had already been completed and the project management consultants appointed. The park would boost investment in the food processing sector in Punjab. 30 to 40 food processing units would be provided plots on a leasehold basis for setting up projects in the park.

The primary objective of the park is to provide modern infrastructure facilities for food processing along the value chain from farm to market. It will include creation of centralized processing centre (CPC) at Ladhowal and primary processing centres and collection centres at identified fruits and vegetables clusters, including Malerkotla (Sangrur), Shahkot (Jalandhar), Sultanpur Lodhi (Kapurthala), Sandhwan near Kotakpura (Faridkot) and Bring Mohanpura (Tarn Taran) to ensure sustainable supply of raw material.

This park will have common facilities like Individual quick freezing unit for vegetables, dry warehouse for raw material, steel silos for food grains, controlled atmospheric cold store, pre-cooling chambers, ripening chambers, deep freezers, milk chilling unit, weigh bridge, steam power generating unit, food incubation centre and testing laboratory. It will also have basic infrastructure like roads, water supply, drainage, electricity supply, including captive power plant, effluent treatment, telecommunication lines, parking bays and other facilities. It will also have plug and play facility for micro small and medium enterprises.

The Punjab government has ensured that the people of Punjab get maximum benefit out of this dream project.

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FRUIT AND VEGETABLE MARKET IN MOHALI

Being an agricultural state, various steps are undertaken by the government to enhance the condition of farmers in the state. Punjab government is truly dedicated to provide an infrastructure to the farmers that upgrades their living and financial conditions.

To provide hassle-free marketing facilities to the farmers and better storage of fruits and vegetables, an ultra modern, state-of-the-art Fruit and Vegetable Market was constructed in Sector-65, Mohali. The 12 acres of land encompasses a fully covered market besides the general facilities like, cold store/ ripening chamber, garbage collection and disposal, workers canteen, water works, air-conditioning plant, etc. There is ample parking at the premises for all types of vehicles. The concept behind this modern market is to get rid of the middlemen, thus enabling the farmers to see their produce directly. This will help the farmers in earning more profits and saving the cost of the middlemen. It will boost the condition of the farmers, thereby giving an impetus to the overall state. In this market yard the value addition facilities such as washing, grading, standardization, packaging, ripening etc would also be provided. The measurement will be done electronically.

The whole market is divided into 3 wings, first comprises the wholesale market, second wing has the retail market and the third wing is the ‘Apni Mandi’ or the farmer’s market, where the farmers can directly sell the produce to the consumers. There are different entry and exit points for different types of commuters.

The fully air conditioned market has been enabled with the electronic weighing scales, which makes it the first fruit and vegetable market yard in the state to have the entire sale procedure monitored electronically.

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