BAHAWALPUR: Three minor children suffered serious injuries in a fireworks blast occurring during a wedding at Pull Fateh near Hasilpur, about 90kms from here on Sunday.

According to Rescue 1122 officials, fireworks were being displayed at a wedding when the explosive material suddenly caught fire, resulting in a blast, leaving three children -Danial (8), Azan (13) and Usman (8) -badly injured.

The children were shifted to the Hasilpur Tehsil Headquarters Hospital by a Rescue 1122 team reaching the scenein response to a phone call.

On being informed of the incident, the police initiated legal action against those responsible for the incident.

ROs` OATH: Bahawapur Deputy Commissioner and DistrictReturning Officer Zaheer Anwar Jappa on Sunday administered oath to 12 returning officers (ROs) in his office.

The ROs will conduct the upcoming elections in 12 constituencies of the Punjab Assembly falling in Bahawalpur district.

The ROs who took the oath include Syed Gul Abbas, Shair Muhammad, Zahoor Ahmed Awan, Rao Nadeem Akhtar, Muhammad Farooq Qamar, Muhmmad Belal Irshad, Ashfaq Hussain Sial, Mohsin Nisar, Muhammad Sarwar and Fazalur Rehman.

According to the election schedule, the ROs will receive nomination papers from the candidates on March 13 and 14.

JOB CENTRE: The Punjab government has established a a job centre in Bahawalpur city.

According to the job centre in charge Muhammad Idrees, the centre will register jobless persons for provision of employment in government and private sector in thedistrict.

He said such job centres have been opened in all the 36 districts of the province.

MEPCO RECOVERY: The Multan Electric Power Company (Mepco) claimed to have recovered a sum of Rs890 million from the defaulters in the nine circles of the region.

In a press release, Mepco Director Commercial Asad Hammad said that in Bahawalpur Circle a sum of Rs130m was recovered from total 987,000 defaulters, while the remaining amount was recovered from eight other circles in the region.

Meanwhile, Mepco teams claimed to have detected 99 electricity thieves in one day in the region.

As per officials, the culprits were slapped a total fine of Rs4 million for stealing 181,000 units of electricity. Of them, two persons were booked and arrested for nonpayment of fine.