MUZAFFARGARH: The Alipur police on Friday arrested one of the (absconding) addicts who had recently been `condemned to wipe the streets clean for one year` by a court for possessing hash.

Police arrested Fayyaz Hussain in Multan and handed him over to the Alipur Tehsil Municipal Administration (TMA) in the light ofan additionaldistrictand sessions judge`s direction that the three addicts presented in court be deputed to do community service as punishment for having hash. The other two `convicts` were at large till last reports came in on Friday.

In a verdict which is being hailedas quite unique, AD &SJ Mohammad Fawad Arif directed police to hand over Qaiser, Fayy az and Muhammad Yousuf to the TMA to make them clean the streets of Alipur as punishment. The court also asked the TMA officials to send a report of compliance after two weeks.

Last year, police had registered a case against them after recovering from their possession 110 gram hash. Police presented them before the court this past Wednesday and handed them over to the TMA but they escaped.

It is learnt that the other convicts had fled to Karachi and police had constituted a team to track them down.

Former District Bar Association president Iqbal Pitafi said it was anappropriate decision because the convicts were not in a position to be jailed.

PROTEST: Hundreds of contract officials of the Public Health Engineering Department on Friday locked the office and held demonstration against the Punjab government for not regularising their jobs.

The contract officials said they had been working in this department since 2007 and had not been regularised. They said Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had made a five-member committee to prepare new lists of contract officials but nothing concrete had been done.

In all, they said, 2,400 officials were on a contract in the department and the government had spent millions of rupees on their training.