KOHAT: The body of a boy, who drowned in the Tanda Dam Lake here the other day, was fished out by rescue teams and local volunteers here on Friday.

A spokesperson of Rescue 1122, Jawad Afridi, said the deceased was a resident of Abdullah Colony of the Kohat city.

The police handed over the body to relatives after registration of a report and postmortem.

It merits a mention here that a strict ban was imposed on bathing in all the dams after the gruesome tragedy of boat capsize in Tanda Dam in January 2023, in which 57 children of a seminary had died.

JUNKYARD GUTTED: A fire gutted a junkyard on the Bannu Road, and the blaze was put out by a Rescue 1122 firefighters` team in two hours.

The fire resulted in significantdamage to the junkyard.

MILLS LAY OFF WORKERS: Three textile mills in Kohat have shut down a large number of spindles and laid off workers by paying them pension and gratuity after they suffered a detrimental hike in the electricity costs.

These mills were already functioning at 20 to 25 per cent capacity.

Sources in one of the mills disclosed to Dawn that it got a power bill of Rs6.8 million at the end of 2024, and Rs Rs1.20 billion later, forcing the mills to lay off 80 per cent of labourers and shut down 70 per cent of its spindles.

When contacted, an official confided to Dawn that they were hushing up the issue due to fear of a colossal drop in the prices of shares at the Pakistan Stock Exchange and panic among the shareholders.

One of the textile mills had been exporting fine quality towels to Western countries for decades.