Hold dope for rural bodies’ reps to honour your commitment

Ludhiana, October 1, 2018: The Shiormani Akali Dal (SAD) has urged the Punjab government to immediately honour its promise of conducting dope test on all the elected male members of the Zila Parishad and Block Samiti and throw out all found positive to ensure that our representatives are not given to drugs. Reminding the minister of Rural Development and Panchayats Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa that he had announced that all the aspirants to the rural bodies polls would be subjected to dope test, party spokesman and former minister Mahesh Inder Singh Grewal said that the government had failed to conduct the said test given its scale and logistics before elections but now such test can be easily conducted on the elected representatives. “Such a test would give an impetus to the campaign to check a menace of drug abuse and the local rural bodies would be have a high moral ground to boost the anti-drug campaigns as none of their members would be suffering from drug addiction”, said Grewal. Interestingly, Bajwa had announced that the dope test would be conducted in July itself but had no follow up expect that he himself offered for such a test at Mohali which was refused on the ground that he was on medication. Bajwa never broached the subject since then, said Grewal adding that Bajwa now shudders to talk on the subject as panchayat polls are around the corner. In fact, the ball was set rolling when the chief minister Amarinder Singh himself announced that all the Punjab government employees would undergo dope test while extolling the virtues of the test. But suddenly wisdom dawned on him and the women employees were exempted as amongst them drug abuse is prevalent in miniscule proportion . However, the government has not come out with any comprehensive plan to conduct such test. Grewal accused the Congress government of shifting goal posts on the contentious issue of drug abuse as it neither had any intention or blue print to contain the social malady and is groping in dark. On the top of it, the party’s own leaders heading anti- drug campaign are peddling drugs. Ironically, Grewal pointed that the Congress has to come to power in February 2017 poll on the poll promise of doing away with, ” Drug supply, distribution and consumption in four weeks only”. But till date, it has miserably failed to identify the intensity of the menace, its socio-economic dimensions and suitable remedies given its proportion in the state.