Abhay Khairnar

It could be music to the ears ofthe Pune Municipal Corpora-tion (PMC), as the residents liv-ing near Bhau Patil Road inBopodi have complimented thecivic body for constructing road

dividers on the busy thorough-fare at a cost of about Rs35 lakh.

The road, which is about twokilometres long, had become ex-tremely hazardous for pedestri-ans, especially senior citizens,women and children to crosssince it was bereft of road dividers.

DNA had taken the initiativeto highlight the issue of pedes-trian safety on the road and pub-lished the first article on March11, 2009. Later, another articleappeared in the newspaper onthe same issue.

After these articles were pub-lished, the Aundh regional wardoffice and local corporatorSrikant Patil vowed that roaddivers would be erected.

Over 70% of the work for con-structing the road dividers be-tween Babasaheb AmbedkarChowk to Bopodi Gaon has beencompleted. Within the next fewdays, the total work will be completed.

“There were constant de-mands from the local residentsfor the road dividers. Civic offi-cials too were convinced thatsuch structures should be set up

on this road,’’ said corporatorPatil.

The PMC has started replac-ing the existing street lightswith new ones. After establish-ing the road dividers, the PMCwill resurface the entire road.

Patil said the PMC would alsoundertake plantation of raintrees along both sides of theroad.

The PMC regional ward of-fice has also set up pedestriancrossing in front of the Shivaji

garden.Moreover, pedestrian cross-

ings on the road would be estab-lished that would not only en-able pedestrians to cross theroad safely but would minimisethe speed of vehicles.

Nilanjana Ghosh Choudhury

Pune-based Serum Institute of In-dia (SII) would begin the final testof its injectable H1N1 vaccine ata laboratory in the US this week.

The company is slated tolaunch the vaccine by May-end.

The test refers to the finalphase when samples from volun-teers’ bodies are taken to see whatantibodies they have developedafter being administered the vaccine.

However, the follow up for theintranasal variety of vaccine isbeing done at the National Insti-tute of Virology (NIV) in Puneand other laboratories.

“We have completed two phas-es of trials for both the intranasaland injectable varieties simulta-neously. The follow up of the in-tranasal vaccine is currently go-ing on in India. However, for theinjectable variety we will sendthe samples to a US-based labo-ratory where the tests would beconducted,” SII additional medical director Dr PrasadKulkarni said.

On the company’s plan to con-

duct the tests in the US insteadof India, Dr Kulkarni said, “Thelaboratories in United States arewell equipped to carry out suchtests in a better way. Several oth-er global pharmaceutical compa-nies are also carrying out theirtrials there.”

He declined to divulge any de-tails about the laboratory in theUS where the company would becarrying out the trials.

Over 300 people in three agegroups — paediatric, adult andelderly — were enrolled for thenasal drop vaccine trials in Pune,Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Indore,Bangalore and Chennai. Thesame numbers were identified forthe injectable variety also.

“It will take about two to threeweeks to complete the trials andaround the same time the followup with the intranasal variety

would also be completed in Indiaafter which the final reportswould be given to the Drugs Con-troller General of India (DCGI)for its final approval. Thereafter,the vaccines would be launchedin the market,” Dr Kulkarni said.

The company, which had al-ready invested Rs50 crore in anew plant at its Hadapsar facilityfor manufacturing the H1N1nasal vaccine and the injectableone, has decided to pump in an-other Rs120 crore in the project.The current facility at SII is ca-pable of manufacturing nearly 50million nasal doses and 1.2 mil-lion injectable doses annually.

SII executive director AdarPoonawalla told DNA that thevaccine would be priced betweenRs150 and Rs200 which is almostone third of the cost of the vaccines launched globally.

DNA Correspondent

The employees and managementof SG Analytics Private Limited —an IT company— has donated Rs2lakh to the widow of autorickshawdriver Shankar Pansare who diedin the German Bakery blast.

Company’s director ParminderKaur and accounts head NaveenDeshmukh handed over a fixed de-posit receipt (FDR) to Shankar’swidow Yogita on Wednesday at herresidence in Dhankavdi.

Yogita has been staying with hermother and children in Dhankav-di. Deshmukh said the company is

located in Vimannagar. After read-ing in the newspapers aboutPansare’s death, the employees haddecided to do something to helpPansare’s family. “Our employees

collected Rs75,000. Meanwhile, themanagement also showed theirwillingness to help Pansare’s fam-ily. After discussions, the manage-ment contributed Rs1, 25,000 andplaced the amount in a fixed de-posit in Axis Bank. We have re-quested the bank to give interest af-ter every three months to Yogita,’’Deshmukh said.

Kaur told Yogita that she shouldprovide good education to her chil-dren. She promised to help her andher children in future too.

Yogita told Kaur that she hasstarted working in a PMC schoolas a peon.

Nilanjana Ghosh Choudhury

When 20-year-old Kiran Ranzawanesaid that “I am the only educated per-son in my family and can speak Eng-lish fluently,’’ the spark in his eyes washard to miss.

Kiran, the son of a constructionworker and a housemaid is one amongthe 13-odd students, who are now partof the upmarket hospitality industryin the city.

Thanks to an initiative by city-based Estique Hotels, now severalboys and girls from financially weakand marginalised families have learnt

the ropes of the hospitality trade andare ready to begin a suave career inthe hotel industry.

Estique Hotels started this activitythree years ago as part of the hotel’sCorporate Social Responsibility(CSR). These students have been re-ferred through leading city NGOs andrigorously trained in hotel manage-ment courses to be later absorbed inthe group’s hotels.

“It all started in 2006 when we de-cided to recruit students from cam-puses. However, we could not find suit-able candidates who would suit the in-dustry needs. Therefore, we decidedto begin this course wherein studentsare picked up from marginalised fam-ilies and are given complete trainingin nuances of the hotel industry andare later placed with us after comple-tion of the course,’’ said vice-presi-

dent of Estique Hotels Kavita Amar-nani.

The group runs two propertiesPark Estique on Ahmednagar Roadand Studio Estique close to the INOXmultiplex in Bund Garden. Not onlyare these students provided free train-ing but they also receive a monthlystipend of Rs1,500.

“The students study for two simul-taneous courses. While the basiccourse in hotel management has beendeveloped by us, they also undertakea three year degree course in tourismfrom the Indira Gandhi NationalOpen University which gives them thestability in terms of getting a degree,”said dean of (Institute For Interna-tional Management Technology(IIMT) Gurgaon Kamal Manaktola,who is also the principal consultantfor this course.

So far, 22 students have benefittedfrom the course.

Bhagyashree Kulthe

Nature lovers can now make scien-tific contributions while enjoyingwalks and treks. All they have to do is record their observations and capture on film the specimens they see and send the datato www.spandan-bip.org.

The web-based information sys-tem is an initiative by Spandan, theBip (biodiversity inventory by peo-ple), a project by the Non-Govern-mental Organisation (NGO) WorldInstitute for Nature (WIN), whichaims at collecting millions of biodi-

versity ob-servationsduring2010, the In-ternational

Year of Biodiversity. The data will beused for environment activities.

Citizens can take photos or videoclips of the object of observation(plant, animal or any living thing)and send them with data like nameof the species, location and date ofobservation.

It’s not necessary that the con-tributor of the observations needs toknow the scientific information of

the species. They only need to knowthe common name of the organism,locality where the observation wasmade and other general information.The information will be verified byexperts, who will also do value addi-tion. The observation records willthen be published by Spandan. Allcan contribute to the observationrecords, irrespective of age, class orcreed.

Over the next five years, Spandan,the Bip aspires to collect togetherover a billion scientifically usefulbiodiversity observation records

through this movement, said chair-man of the board of trustees of WINVishwas Chavan. He was speaking ata meeting of collaborators on Friday.He stressed on the participation ofthe general public in monitoring biodiversity.

WIN will hold several campaignsover the next 10 months. These in-clude urban diversity inventory, treecounting and bird observation com-petitions. They will also organiseroad shows and ‘Spandan - the Bipwalk’ in December 2010 and January2011.

“Our core team will be located inPune and we have volunteers acrossIndia and in other countries. Themovement is started to provide citi-zens an easy-to-use framework thatcan transform amateur biodiversityobservations into scientifically use-ful data,” said Chavan, who works assenior programme officer at GlobalBiodiversity Information Facility,Copenhagen, Denmark.

“Spandan will be a citizens’ in-strument to let governments knowthat we are worried about the de-pleting state of the world’s biodiver-sity and are ready to act. We wish topass on the legacy of sustainable na-ture with its diversity to our futuregenerations, while it is alive and pul-sating,” he added.

Biodiversity experts, naturalists,taxonomists and ecologists can jointhe network of experts for validatingrecords. Individuals can also con-tribute to development of publicservice announcements, presenta-tions and electronic media cam-paigns in the local language.

“We are seeking collaborationswith local schools and colleges, in-stitutions and individuals to take themovement further,” said Chavan.

Residents welcome dividers on

BHAU PATIL ROADPedestrians usedto find it difficultto cross thethoroughfare

The construction work of road dividers is in its final stages —Ravindra Joshi.DNA

DNA had taken theinitiative tohighlight the issueof pedestrian safety on the road andpublished the first article on March 11, 2009

Serum to begin final trialof injectable H1N1 vaccine A US laboratoryhas been chosento conduct theprocess this week

IT firm donates Rs2 lakh toautorickshaw driver’s widow

Parminder Kaur (c) and NaveenDeshmukh handed over thereceipt to Yogita Pansare

NATURE-LOVERS MAY SEND DATA, PHOTOS, VIDEO CLIPS OF SPECIMENS TO THE PORTAL

NGO takes the lead in biodiversity

Estique takes the initiative for poorFinancially weak boys, girls are beingtrained in hotel mgmt

The students are notonly provided freetraining but alsoreceive a monthlystipend of Rs1,500. Thehotel took this initiativethree years ago as partof its corporate socialresponsibility. So far,22 students havebenefitted from thecourse.

GREENPROJECT

Biodiversityexperts,naturalists,taxonomistsand ecologistscan join thenetwork ofexperts forvalidatingrecords

Abhay Khairnar

Over 350 staffers of the War-je Karvenagar regional wardoffice of the Pune MunicipalCorporation (PMC) and asection of the employeesfrom Cummins India Limit-ed on Friday jointly under-took a cleaning drive on theriver bed for three hours.

During the drive, theycollected two containers fullof plastic carry bags, gutkhasachets and other garbagefrom the river bed. The drivewas carried out between Ra-jaram and Mhatre bridges.

Regional ward officerSunil Gaikwad, health in-spector Dipak Dhelwan andother senior officials of the

regional ward office tookpart in the drive.

“Since the state has com-pleted 50 years of its forma-tion, we thought that weshould do something mean-ingful. Hence we decided toclean up the river bed,” saidDhelwan.

Employees of the Cum-mins India Limited ex-pressed happiness in takingpart in the drive, which they

found to be a meaningful ac-tivity. “It was a good experi-ence to clean the river bed.It has opened our eyes to thefact that there is so muchgarbage on the river bed.We, as citizens should bemore responsible and notthrow plastic bags and oth-er garbage in any part of thecity. It affects the environ-ment adversely,” said theemployees of the company.

PMC, Cummins staffersclean up river bedTwo containersfull of plasticcarry bags andgutkha sachetswere lifted

Employees of Cummins India cleaning the river bed onFriday —Ravindra Joshi.DNA

Vishwas Chavan giving a presentation on Friday

Abhay Khairnar

The ruling Nationalist Con-gress Party (NCP) and Con-gress have indicated thatthey are in favour of givingnod to the proposed move ofthe Pune Municipal Corpo-ration (PMC) to privatise itsoctroi department.

Municipal commissioner

Mahesh Zagade has signedthe proposal to be placed be-fore the standing committeeon Thursday.

Octroi is the main sourceof revenue for the civic body.However, the department hasbeen unable to achieve theannual target for the past fewyears, which in turn has af-fected the financial health ofthe PMC.

The target for the last fis-cal was Rs900 crore but thecivic body was able to collectonly Rs750 crore.

Standing committeechairman Arvind Shindeconfirmed that the civic ad-

ministration will send a pro-posal to the standing com-mittee on the issue. “TheNCP has already declared itssupport for privatisation ofoctroi while the Congress isalso in favour of it,” he said.The standing committee willdiscuss the issue and takeappropriate decision onThursday, he added.

There are around 20% to30% leakages in octroi col-lection. The civic adminis-tration feels that if the octroicollection is done with thehelp of private parties, it willget a revenue of more thanRs1,000 crore.

PMC octroi department all set to be privatisedProposal to beplaced beforestanding panelon Thursday

PUNE 02

STRIKING NUMBER

35 lakh rupees is the expenditure incurred bythe Pune Municipal Corporation on constructing the road dividers

Pune,May 8, 2010

www.dnaindia.com, epaper.dnaindia.com

Savita Lade (Resident from the area)

It is good that the PMC haserected road dividers on thebusy road. It had becomereally difficult for us to crossthe road. In fact, we had toscamper lest we meet withaccidents. Now, it would besafer for us to cross the road.

The mishaps on the road would reduce.

Vishal Sharma (Shop owner on Bhau Patil Road)

We appreciate the PMC’sdecision to establish roaddividers but the work is pro-gressing slowly. The civicbody must speed up things.Moreover, it should have putup boards cautioning thepedestrians and motorists

about the work that is being undertaken. Therehave been 3 - 4 minor accidents due to theongoing work, mainly at night.

Milind Gaikwad (Infosys employee & a resident of Bopodi)

The setting up of roaddividers is really a welcomemove. The mishaps would bereduced to a great extent. Since there were no road dividers, drivers would take turns from anywhere disturbing

the flow of traffic.

Pratik Rangwala (Regular visitor and Airtel employee)

It is good that the PMC haserected road dividers. As thewidth of the road is narrow,the civic body and the trafficpolice must start takingstrong action against unauthorised parking on the road, especially by the

owners of four-wheelers who park their vehicles in a haphazard manner in the peak hours.

Citizen’s voice