Effective monitoring brings down prices of fruits, vegetables
By Tariq Chaudhry

ISLAMABAD—The prices of fruits and vegetablesreduced sharply on Monday as compared to last seven days owing effective monitoring and frequent supply of these items in the market, the official sources in District Administration said.
The price of `tasteless potato' has been reduced from Rs. 25 per kilogram to Rs. 21 kilogram while onion is being sold at Rs. 20 per kilogram instead of Rs. 22.
Similarly, the price of peas has come down from Rs. 80 per kilogram to Rs. 63 per kilogram, price of lady finger from Rs. 28 per kilogram to 21 per kilogram, price of turnip from Rs. 23 per kilogram to Rs. 18 per kilogram while price of tomato has reduced from Rs. 32 kilogram to Rs. 26 per kilogram.
Likewise, price of pomegranate dropped from Rs. 84 per kilogram to Rs. 65 per kilogram, `Kala Kolo apple' from Rs. 58 per kilogram to Rs. 46 per kilogram, `golden apple ' from Rs. 38 per kilogram to Rs. 30 per kilogram and guava from Rs.45 per kilogram to Rs. 43 per kilogram.
The price of pear has been reduced from Rs. 52 per kilogram to Rs. 50 per kilogram while price of banana has been stable at Rs. 40 per dozen.
The sources hoped that prices of these items would further come down during next days of Ramazan as district administration is strictly monitoring the prices and also ensuring frequent supply of these items Population, housing census data of UCs ISLAMABAD, Oct 2 (APP): With the introduction of the new local government system in the country under the devolution of power plan Union Councils have became the primary unit of the new set-up.
Since, the government attaches great importance to development planning at the micro level it was desired by the NRB to tabulate basic data on population and housing by Union Council for development planning at micro level, says a press release issued here Monday.
Accordingly it was considered appropriate to publish data on some important population and housing characteristics by union councils, within a district, in concise form to meet the requirement of the local government departments as well as the cannon data users for the uplift of these areas.
Population Census Organization has published district wise reports by Union Councils of all the 34 districts of Punjab Province. These reports contain three tables the first one gives a summary of the population data by tehsils of the union councils alongwith rural/urban localities therein and provides information about their population by sex, literacy ratio,level of educational attainment, population by selected age groups and religion.
The third table provides information about housing statistics by union councils showing number of houses by type (pacca,semi pacca and kacha), source of drinking water, source of lighting and cooking fuel used in the housing units.
It is hoped that these reports would serve as useful reference for date users especially the planners who would be involved in development of various civic plans at micro level. Overall Punjab province has 34 districts with 3454 union councils and 25930 villages.
Among the districts maximum number of union councils are in Gujranwala which are 192 followed by l70 in Rawalpindi, district Layyah and Hafizabad districts have the least number of union councils 44 and 45 respectively.
Maximum number of villages are located in Sialkot district which are 1543 whereas in Lahore district there are only 261 villages. The total population of Punjab province in 1998 was 73621290 asagainst 47292441 in 1981 Census showing on average annual growth rate of 2.6 percent during intercensal period 1981-98.