Welfare society to improve jail’s infra

Nikhil Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, August 11

To bring out the Central Jail Ludhiana from “infrastructural blues”, Congress MLA from East constituency, Sanjay Talwar, along with over a dozen councillors, visited the jail and met the officials there.

Sanjay announced to form a ‘Jail Welfare Society’ to extend financial help to the department. Talwar said he was called by Jail Superintendent Shamsher Singh to show them the problems being faced by the jail and its inmates.

“The Jail Superintendent had told me that the jail hospital faces shortage of medicines, the garbage accumulated as it is not lifted and the shortage of lights was also weakening the security arrangements. We have agreed to form a jail welfare society, under which we announced to provide monthly medicines to the Jail Department up to Rs40,000. We also handed over 40 LED light bulbs to the jail for better supervision during night and we cleared the garbage dump by calling a crane. From now onwards, there will be regular lifting of garbage, so that inmates do not face any health issues due to garbage piling up,” the MLA said.

On how welfare society will arrange funds, the MLA said he and his councillors would contribute the required money every month to fulfill the promises.

Factories around jail a health hazard

MLA Talwar said the jail houses 3,400 inmates plus 200 families and they all are prone to water and air pollution diseases. Many jail inmates are facing skin problems, respiratory issues and eye infections among other problems and they have recently written a letter to the DGP Punjab, Session Judge, Deputy Commissioner and CM to seek action against factories creating pollution. He said to cut cost, these units were burning garbage and other medical waste as a fuel, due to which the problem of pollution was becoming severe day by day. “I am giving the last warning to the owners of these factories to control the air and water pollution by using genuine fuel, else strict action will be taken against them in the coming days,” he said.