BAHAWALPUR: The Punjab government has slashed the annual medicines budget of the Government Nawab Sadiq Abbas Hospital by over 70pc.

Dawn learnt that the budget of Sadig hospital has been cut by over Rs200m this year.

According to official figures, the hospital`s last financial year`s budget was about Rs300m, which has now been curtailed to only Rs100m,thus showing a cut of about over70 percent as compared to last year`s allocation.

The hospital`s Me dical Superintendent Dr Muhammad Hamid, in a letter to Punjab secretary for specialized healthcare, reportedly drew his attention towards drastic the cut in the hospital`s medicine budget and made a requestforrestoration of the previous budget to ensure provision of medicines to patients; otherwise, the hospital would not be in a position toprovide medicines to patients.

ACCIDENT: Two employees of the National Highway Authority (NHA) were killed on the MultanSukkur motorway by a speeding trailer.

According to NHA officials, Zulgarnanin of Sargodha and Zafar Abbas of Bahawalnagar were working on the M-5 in the area of Shujabad when a speeding trailer ran them over and killed them.

The National Highways and MotorwayPolice (NH&MP) arrested the trailer driver and shifted the bodies to hospital for transfer to their ancestral homes.

Meanwhile, a boy drowned in the Qaim Canal near Hasilpur.

According to Rescue 1122, two minors were playing on the bank of the canal when they fell into it. The people and rescuers rescued one boy and they could not save the other who drowned. The deceased was identified as Abdullah (7).