Oman National Diary Product Absconding Case -10 Keralites absconded with Rs.1.4 crores in 1998-99, alleged the company.
- White Collor Crime Reports
- Interstate Standing Committee Re-constituted, Antony represents Kerala.
- Focus on the menace of student cults in Nigeria.
- Stabilising population growth in India.
- J.V.R. Prasad Rao Secretary, Department of Family Welfare, Government of India
Himamuddin The case of Himamuddin who duped Abu Dhabi Auto Firm
Archies told to stop unauthorised sale of postage stamp.
New Delhi -August 2, 2002. The Government has asked the leading international greeting card company Archies to stop selling postage stamps illegally. " An advertisement has been issued in some newspapers by Archies regarding sale of postage stamps from their outlets in Delhi and NCR without the authority of the competent authority, i.e. Department of Posts in violation of Section 16 of Indian Post Office Act, 1898 which inter alia indicates that it is illegal for any one or organization to sell postage stamps without specific authorization by the Central Government," said a press statement. Archies has been advised to discontinue the sale of postage stamps from its outlets with immediate effect, it said.
Interstate Standing Committee Re-constituted, Antony represents Kerala.
The Standing committee of the Inter State Council has been re-constituted with the induction of K. Jana Krishnamurthi, Union Minister of Law and Justice, as a Member of the Standing Committee of the Council in place of Arun Jaitley, former Union Minister of Law & Justice. The present composition of Standing Committee of the Inter-State Council is as follows:
- Chairman, L.K. Advani Deputy Prime Ministeri)
- Jaswant singh Minister of Finance & Company Affairs
- ii) Yashwant Sinha Minister of External Affairs
- iii) Murasoli Maran Minister of Commerce & Industry
- iv) K. Jana Krishnamurthi Minister of Law & Justice
- v) suresh Prabhakar Prabhu Minister of Power
- vi) Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Chief Minsiter, West Bengal
- vii) N. Chandrababu Naidu Chief Minister, Andhra Pradesh
- viii) Naveen Patnaik Chief Minister, Orissa
- ix) Digvijay Singh Chief Minister, Madhya Pradesh
- x) Dr. Farooq Abdullah Chief Minister, Jammu & Kashmir
- xi) S.M. Krishna Chief Minister, Karnataka
- xii) Tarun Gogoi Chief Minister, Assam
- Xiii) A.K. Antony Chief Minister, Kerala
Results of Civil Services (PRELIMINARY) Examination , 2002 Announced
The Union Public Service Commission has announced the results of the Civil Service (Preliminary) examination, 2002. On the basis of the Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination, 2002 held on 19th May, 2002, the candidates with the following Roll Numbers have qualified for admission to the Civil Services (Main) Examination, 2002.
Oman National Diary Product Absconding Case -10 Keralites absconded with Rs.1.4 crores in 1998-99, alleged the company.
Kerala High Court Issues landmark Directive to Kerala Police.
Kochi--August 2, 2002. keralamonitor.com The Kerala High Court has urged the Director General of Police to investigate alleged fraud committed by 10 Keralites who were working in the sales department of Oman National Diary Products, Muscat. Justice M.Ramachandran of the Kerala High Court asked the DGP to investigate the case filed by Murthada Ahmed Sultan, the Managing Director of Oman National Diary Products. The company belongs to a leading business house of Oman.
The company's Managing Director has submitted a writ petition to the High Court in which he alleged that 10 Keralites have absconded with the money collected by selling the company's milk products. According to the writ petition, it is in the interest of other Keralites working in Oman, to investigate the matter. The company has alleged that the sales men have absconded with an amount equivalent to Rs. 1.4 crores and a Toyota Corola car used by one of them.
According to the DGP, since the alleged crime happened in Oman, the Royal Oman Police should investigate the matter and Kerala Police could only facilitate the investigation. However, the High Court asked DGP to investigate the matter and submit a report within three months. In the absence of an extradition treaty between India and Oman, this court directive could be a turning point for many criminal cases involving Keralites working in the Gulf. It is to be noted that many of the culprits who commit crime in Oman and other Gulf countries escape with fake passports and travel documents. They escape so easily without being detected at the boarders and airports.
Similar Absconding Cases from the Gulf.
In a similar case, a leading UAE based wholesale dealer had alleged that a Keralite salesman who was working for the Muscat branch absconded with an amount equivalent to Rs. 10 lakh rupees. The company wanted to pursue the case in Kerala and approached the concerned authorities for help. While the end result is not known, the company managed to get theft insurance claim for more than the total amount allegedly swindled by the Keralite salesman. There are also cases where the entire blame for financial problems facing the company is put on the sales staff who abscond with minor amounts by Gulf standards.
In another case, the Keralite salesman absconded with huge amounts but left his family -wife and three children - in the Gulf at the mercy of local police. The salesman from Kottayam sneaked from Muscat to Dubai. Later on he was arrested from Dubai by the local police.
The case of Himamuddin who duped Abu Dhabi Auto Firm
Himamuddin KOCHI -The National Diary Product absconding case, which happened during 1989-90 period comes in the wake of reports about a Rs.500 crore fraud committed by Himamuddin, a 10th standard Malayali executive of Dubai who is in the UAE police custody allegedly for defrauding the BMW car dealer with whom he was working as a sales executive, for several million UAE Dhirhams. When the company auditors detected large scale financial mismanagement by the General Manager Mohsin Saiffuddin Rasil, a Syrian national and Sales Manager Himamuddin of Abdu Dhabi Motors, the authorised dealer for BMW cars in the UAE, the company suspended them and the UAE Government started an investigation.
Subsequently Himamuddin and the Syrian were arrested for allegedly defrauding the company to the tune of UAE Dhs. 450 million -approximately Rs. 500 crores. The duo committed large scale financial fraud in the Abu Dhabi Motors, a leading automobile dealer under Al Hamid group owned by Shaikh Muhammed bin Bhatti, a member of the Abu Dhabi Royal Family.
The company deals with heavy trucks, bull dozers, cars, dredger ships and their spare parts. The Syrian General Manager and Himamuddin could divert huge amounts from the company by misusing a power of attorney given by the sponsor to the General Manager. Audit reports revealed that the duo were making millions by producing fake invoices to Abu Dhabi Municipality. Even though they produced invoices and claimed money from the municipality, no spare parts were actually delivered. This is a modus operandi followed by many culprits to swindle money.
The company's owner is reportedly occupying a high position in Abu Dhabi Muncipality. It is difficult to believe that the fraud could have been successful without the involvement of big shots. With the money diverted from the UAE company Himamuddin established a budding business empire in Kerala viz the Hi-Power Group of companies and nurtured political links with high profile Kerala politicians like the NORKA Minister M.M. Hassan and Dr. Muneer. Even though he has got only a tenth standard education, Himamuddin has become a business tycoon who used to mingle with celebrities and film stars. He owned six BMW cars in the UAE itself! Even some of the richest Arab businessmen do not enjoy such pompous lifestyle.
He was planning to build the biggest house in Kerala by spending Rs.25 crores!
Thanks to his money power, Himamuddin was adorned with a "Ponnada' by none other than the NORKA Minister M.M. Hassan. Such dubious Gulf Malayalis amass huge amount of money through the dubious means and enjoy political clout in the Gulf as well as their home state. In order to boost their public image, they do several gimmicks to get attention. But in the process, they are damaging the reputation of ordinary Gulf Malayalis who lead a decent life.keralamonitor.comFocus on the menace of student cults in Nigeria.
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
LAGOS, 1 August (IRIN) - No-one paid much attention to three cars as they pulled up on the afternoon of Friday 14 June in a car park at the University of Nigeria's campus at Nsukka, in the southeastern state of Enugu State.
All of a sudden, several armed young men jumped out of the cars, raced into a nearby auditorium and opened fire on students swotting for their end-of-semester examinations. By the time the gunsmoke had cleared, 14 students lay dead. Two of the assailants were arrested by fellow students and handed over to the police.
The shock and outrage caused by the massacre reverberated throughout the country, and the university was closed indefinitely. The police put the blame squarely on campus cults. "The university has been shut down because some cult members went there, shooting and killing innocent people," Nwachukwu Egbochukwu, Enugu State's police commissioner said at the time. The three cars used in the operation, he said, had been snatched at gunpoint from their owners hours before the attack.
The Nsukka massacre was the worst manifestation so far of a cancer that had been spreading in Nigeria’s tertiary educational institutions for three decades: the menace of student cults, who visit violence on their rivals in a manner comparable to US street gangs. The attack in Nsukka
has been blamed on a group identified as the Vikings, who were on an apparent revenge mission on students thought to belong to a rival gang.Before the Nsukka incident, the president of the Lagos State University's student union, who had been waging an anti-cults campaign, was stabbed to death by suspected cultists. At the Ibadan Polytechnic in the southwest and universities in Okigwe and Port Harcourt in the southeast, several students also died in shootouts involving rival cult groups.
Barely two weeks after the killings at Nsukka, two students of the University of Ado-Ekiti, in the southwest, were shot dead in their residence by suspected cult members. A few days later the scene of violence shifted to nearby Owo. This time students of the town's polytechnic arrested five cult members following an incident and lynched them.
"At least 250 people have been killed in cult wars in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions in the last decade," Emeka Akudi, a sociologist who has been studying the phenomenon, told IRIN. "And as the years pass, the casualty rates appear to be increasing."
Yet, it is a monster with an innocuous beginning. The phenomenon of campus cults in Nigeria has been traced back to 1952, when Wole Soyinka - winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize for Literature - and a group of friends at the University of Ibadan formed the Pyrates Confraternity. Its motto was “Against all conventions”.
With the skull and cross bones as their insignia, the Pyrates cultivated a bohemian style that ridiculed the colonial attitudes and mode of dress of the day. This caught on among students and over the next two decades the fraternity, a non-violent body, became established in all universities and tertiary institutions that emerged in post-independence Nigeria.
The emergence of campus cults as they are known in Nigeria today began with a split in the early 1970s in the Pyrates Confraternity. First, a breakaway group formed the Buccaneers Confraternity. Next to emerge was the Black Axe or the Neo-Black Movement. Inter-group rivalry then set in, but
skirmishes between them were limited to fist fights.The 1980s saw the multiplication of cults in the more than 300 institutions of higher learning across Nigeria. New groups such as the Eiye, the Vikings, the Amazons and Jezebels emerged, bringing with them more intensely violent rivalry.
In 1984, Soyinka, perhaps to take the wind out of the sail of the emerging trend, initiated the abolition of the Pyrates Confraternity in all tertiary institutions, but by then the phenomenon of violent cults had developed a life of its own. By the mid-1980s, it had become evident that some of the cults had been co-opted by elements in the intelligence and security services serving the then military government. They were used as foils to the left-wing student unions which, along with university teachers, were among the only remaining bastions of opposition to military rule.
"This was the time guns came into the picture," said Akudi. "Indeed there were instances where some university vice-chancellors actively protected some known cult groups and used them to hound student activists considered troublesome."
He said the existence of traditional ancestral cults, some of which have transformed into contemporary ones, alongside the Free Masons and other esoteric organisations, had favoured the activities of student cults. Members of some of these groups bond together for the purpose of protecting political and economic interests, and this is mimicked by the student cults.
Following a violent attack in 1999 at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife, in which some student union officials were killed by a members of cult, President Olusegun Obasanjo launched a campaign to eradicate cultism from Nigerian tertiary institutions. Hundreds of students across the country came out openly to renounce their membership of cults and the violence associated with the activities of such groups began to die down. However, recent events indicate a resurgence.
An editorial on 30 July in the respected daily, The Guardian, attempted an explanation: "The violence associated with the cults currently can be attributed to the general breakdown of values which we once held sacrosanct. The premium attached to human life has plummeted so badly that youths can now kill without flinching ... We therefore cannot combat the cults menace without paying attention to the problems of the larger society." --keralamonitor.com
Stabilising population growth in India.
J.V.R. Prasad Rao *
August 2, 2002.keralamonitor.com
India has 16 per cent of world’s population on 2.4 per cent of its landmass. How much population a given land mass should sustain is not easy to determine. But it largely depends on productivity and level of development. Given the level of agricultural, industrial and infrastructural development, the optimum population for India should have been much less than what it is now.
Every country has a limited capacity to accommodate its population. In India that limit has been surpassed. nking green cover, diminishing water resources, reducing wild life, over-crowding in urban areas and severe deterioration in environment indicate that the country is already overpopulated and its resources are being overstretched.
India’s population is 1027 million as per the Census 2001. Currently it is increasing by about 16 million every year. India is aiming to attain replacement level of total fertility rate of 2.1 by 2010. However, population would continue to grow for one more generation after attaining replacement level of fertility because more people would be joining the reproductive age group during these 20-30 years than will be phased out. Thus, by these trends, India may achieve the dubious distinction of being the most populous country in the world in 2050. But this eventuality might be averted because lately the annual rate of growth of population has started declining.
Targets based on demographic considerations for individual contraceptives have been given up in India since April 1996. But the goal of population stabilisation remains and the actual progress in that direction should be faster than before and sustained to accomplish objective of stabilizing India’s population by 2045.
Approach
Population stabilisation does not come about by only trying to reduce the birth rate. Unless parents are assured about survival of children, they do not seriously think about limiting the family size. Good health status of infants increases the chances of the child’s survival. In fact, the biggest assurance for good health of infant is the mother’s health.
Population stabilisation can be achieved fast only by squarely and effectively addressing child survival, maternal health and contraception issues simultaneously. There is no known case in the world where a country has succeeded in attaining stable population without first controlling infant mortality. Population stabilisation is a programme where a narrow and limited focus cannot lead to successful and satisfactory accomplishment of the envisaged goals.
Within the country, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Goa, Sikkim, Mizoram, Pondicherry and Chandigarh have attained replacement level of fertility rate viz. the total fertility rate of 2.1; (i.e. the number of children a woman entering reproductive age group can expect to have) while Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan which together account for more than 45 per cent of the country’s population are still lagging far behind in this regard.
The infant mortality rate (IMR) per 1000 live births in Kerala is as good as in most developed countries. The next least IMR in Maharashtra (49) is more than three times higher as compared to Kerala. The national average of IMR at 68 in 2000 indicates only partial implementation and limited success of child survival programmes.
More than two thirds of infant deaths take place within a month of birth. This cannot be prevented without backup support of hospital and adequate professional competence. Therefore, a breakthrough in reducing infant mortality rate is possible by vigorously promoting institution-based deliveries or at least through trained birth attendants.
Immunisation
The Universal Immunisation Programme aimed at reducing mortality and morbidity among infants, young children and pregnant women was started in 1985-86. Under this programme, vaccines are administered to infants and pregnant women for prevention of diseases. The oral rehydration therapy (ORT) was also started in view of the fact that diarrhoea is a leading cause of death among children. In pursuance of a resolution passed by the World Health Organisation in 1988, a strategy has been designed to achieve zero polio status by the end of 2000, through Pulse Polio Immunisation Programme. It has yielded High dividends in terms of reduction of poliovirus incidence.
Contraception
Sterilisations are the most preferred option of birth control in India, with about 38 per cent of the eligible couples having already been sterilised.
The current rate of sterilisation of couples varies from State to State. The coverage is very high in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu but much lower in Assam, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh.
The Central Government adopted the National Population Policy in February 2000 with an objective of achieving stable population by 2045. Certain socio-demographic indicators on which population stability depends, have been identified. To achieve the goal, focussed campaigns are being launched. Evolving good management practices and strengthening provision of services and supplies at the grass roots level, effective decentralization of services to Panchayat Raj bodies, involvement of NGOs and private sector in creation of awareness and effecting improvements in service delivery are essential strategies, which need to be adopted by the States.
Since, there are vast disparities among the States in achievement as revealed by the socio-demographic indicators, the strategies for implementation of the programmes have to be different. States like Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Goa have already achieved replacement level of fertility. They have to devise programmes for sustainability and enhanced investment in human beings for improving the quality of lives that people lead. On the other hand, States like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa have to implement the programmes of family welfare and reproductive and child health more vigorously in order to increase the outreach of supplies and services for promoting small family norm. The Central Government has set up an Empowered Action Group to assist these States - Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Orissa, Uttaranchal, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh, which have, so far, lagged considerably behind, in socio-demographic achievements in devising focused programmes for improving the situation there.
Some of the State Governments like Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat have already formulated their State-specific population policies and other State Governments have initiated action for developing their population policies. This is a welcome step. This reflects the commitment of the State Governments towards population stabilisation and sustainable development.
* Secretary, Department of Family Welfare, Government of India
