ABRACADABRA

U K-India-Baby Factory Connection

London: Britain is the single biggest source of clients for India’s booming 1.5 billion pounds surrogacy industry known as the ‘baby factory’, a media report here said. 

The Sunday Telegraph reported that there were nearly 1,000 unregulated clinics in India, many specialising in helping Britons become parents. 

Britons reportedly pay an average of 25,000 pounds for a child produced using surrogate mothers in India. 

“It is estimated that 2,000 births to surrogate mothers took place in the country last year, with most experts agreeing that Britain is the biggest single source of people who want to become parents in this way,” the report said. 

“Britain may account for as many as 1,000 births last year in India. In contrast there were 100 surrogate births recorded in Britain last year,” it said.  

Women in India were being paid up to 6,000 pounds to donate eggs and carry babies, something British women are banned from doing, the report said and added that bankers, senior civil servants, executives at multinational companies and even National Health Service (NHS)  doctors have become parents through surrogacy in India, according to British doctors. 

There was also concern at the toll that becoming parents can have on Britons, as they face long waits in India to gain citizenship and passports for their babies, the report said, and added that currently British authorities can take up to a month before granting British citizenship to the children and weeks more to issue passports.

Rs: 15,500/- cost of a Black Board!

Mumbai: How much does a black-board cost?  Rs.15,500? The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation thinks so. The market price for the black boards is Rs. 3,000. But BMC paid the inflated price of Rs. 15,500 for 8,228 blackboards intended for municipal schools across the city. As a result, BMC ended up making an excess payment of Rs. 10.28 crore (in figures Rs. 10, 28,50,000)to the blackboard supplier. 

Now this matter is under investigation at the Anti Corruption Bureau, confirmed Mumbai ACB chief Niket Kaushik. “We have received a complaint about corruption in the blackboard purchase, and we are enquiring into it,” Kaushik said. BMC Education Officer Mirza Baig said, “There has been a misappropriation in the purchase of the green magnetic boards. I was not the Education Officer then. There is an ACB investigation, and I cannot say more.”

Last month the ACB made a surprise visit to the BMC’s Education Department and took away several internal documents pertaining to the blackboard purchase. To protect its investigation, ACB declined to reveal any further details. 

Clearly, the blackboard scam may have originated in the BMC’s Education Department, but it had the sanction of the BMC’s Standing Committee, which consists of our elected corperators. 

The Standing Committee sanctioned the purchase of the blackboards at the inflated price through the proposal 869 dated 24 October 2008. The Standing Committee passed the proposal unanimously, which raises several questions. 

There’s more to this story than inflated prices, however. In a related development, the 8, 228 blackboards were smuggled through the city without paying octroi. Thus, an amount of Rs. 89.27 lakh in taxes was evaded. This is the finding of the Municipal Chief Auditor (his report Mu.Le.Pa/021/82 dated 7.1.2010).

The Audit Note said that the blackboard supplier, Gunina Venture (India) Pvt. Ltd., has not produced any receipt of having paid octroi to BMC. Yet the BMC Education Department promptly paid him at the rate of Rs. 15, 500 per blackboard. There were, of course, 8228 blackboards under purchase. 

The Audit Note also says that 1421 of these blackboards have been hung on verandas, teachers’ staffrooms and in the principals’ offices, whereas the blackboards were solely intended for classroom use. These blackboards cost Rs. 2.2 crore (in figures Rs. 2, 20, 25,500). They are being wasted, the Audit note says. The green magnetic boards are easy to read at any angle. They are part of a BMC initiative to bring municipal schools at par with private schools in the matter of infrastructure. 

The green magnetic blackboards were recommended by the Dhanuka committee. The Dhanuka Committee was appointed by BMC to recommend reforms for its municipal schools. Accordingly, the BMC Education Department sanctioned Rs. 16.83 crore for blackboard purchases in the 2008-09 education budget-thus, the inflated prices were enshrined in the municipal budget. 

Looting public money in India has different connotations.

Son earns £120,000 per week and 

mother cleans an office for a living

Multi-millionaire footballer Mario Balotelli’s mother has got a new job as a cleaner at an office block to make ends meet. Rose Barwuah is scraping a living doing evening shifts at the offices of a car lease company for close to the £6-an-hour minimum wage.

While the Manchester City star drives to work in his £120,000 Bentley Continental GT, Rose’s more modest mode of transport is the number 11 bus. Rose and her husband Thomas, who are from Ghana, gave Mario up for adoption when he was two and he was taken in by the wealthy Balotelli family.

They had been advised to give him up because they were living in a tiny flat in Brescia, Italy, and Mario had a life-threatening intestinal condition that was made worse by their cramped conditions. Rose moved to the Manchester area last Christmas to be close to the £ 120,000-a-week striker. The Italian striker has visited her there several times, stunning residents by turning in his white Bentley.

Man puts himself up for sale on eBay!

London: In a desperate attempt to do something instead of cribbing over his likelihood of losing the job within a month, a father in Britain has decided to put himself up for sale on eBay for 20,000 pounds (around $31,000).

According to Daily Mail, when Andy Martin was given 30 days’ notice that he was being made redundant, the father-of-three decided to take such a drastic action. Having started a blog outlining his new job search efforts, the 45-year-old hit upon the idea of auctioning himself off. Martin, currently a traffic planner for a waste management company, said: “I have been unemployed in the past. 

“I knew I could either stay bitter and angry, which I was, about losing my job, or I could do something about it. It is a whole new world so I have had to quickly get up to speed,” he said. He joined networks. He started using social networking and even bought hits for his blog to point out people to his C.V. “After all of that, I thought, ‘why not, I’ll put myself up for sale!” said Martin. With a “buy now” price of 20,000 pounds the Internet site was quick to inform Martin , a former delivery manager, that he was breaching  the rules by trying to sell himself.