From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
The Federal Government through the Head of Service (HoS) has approved for the Grades 06–13 to set for the 2022 Promotion Examination to be held on Saturday, December 10, across the 6 geopolitical zones and nationally.
According to a statement by the Deputy Director, Communications, Mohammed Ahmed, “In line with this, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Dr Folasade Yemi-Esan, has approved the release of the timetable for the conduct of the 2022 promotion examination for eligible candidates on salary Grade Levels 06-13 in the common pool of the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (HoCSF).”
The test will take place on Saturday, December 10, at the same locations by 11:00 am, 1:00 pm, and 3:00 pm for Grade Levels 06–07, 08–10, and 12–13, respectively. In the meantime, accreditation is scheduled to take place from Monday, December 5 through Thursday, December 8, between 9:00 am and 5:00 pm daily.
According to the Circular No. HCSF/CMO/EM/AOD/073/VOI. III/12, dated 25th November 2022 and signed by the Permanent Secretary, Career Management Office – OHCSF, Dr Marcus Ogunbiyi, only candidates on Salary Grade Levels 06 and 07 to 13, who must have spent a minimum of two and three years, respectively on their present grade levels by 31st December 2021, are eligible to sit for the examination.
The accreditation and the examination will take place, concurrently, at the 6 Federal Training Centres located in the 6 geo-political zones namely, Public Service Institute (PSIN), Abuja, Federal Secretariat, Bauchi, Federal Training Centre, Enugu, Federal Training Centre, Lagos and Federal Training Centre, Calabar.
“Eligible candidates are strongly advised to come for physical accreditation and examination at the designated centres with the originals and photocopies of the following documents for sighting and submission; Valid Staff Identity Card of their respective MDA, Birth Certificate/ Declaration of Age, Letter and Gazette of First Appointment, Letter and Gazette of Confirmation of Appointment, Letters of last three (3) Promotions, Academic Credentials, Two recent coloured passport photographs, Letter of Transfer of Service (where applicable), Conversion Letter (if any) and Advancement Letter on or before 1/1/2019”, the statement read.
As the fall semester comes to a close, students are preparing for the upcoming finals period, facing stress and navigating study resources for the exam-filled week.
With classes ending on Dec. 5, the three-day study period allows students to dedicate their time to studying and working on final projects, without the obligation of classes. Finals will begin on Dec. 9 and end on Dec. 17.
Students largely expressed feeling overwhelmed about their upcoming final exams, saying that they feel they have little time to prepare before the finals period begins.
“I have one [exam] the first Saturday and then also Sunday. It’s very front loaded this year,” said Emily Crites ’25. “ I feel like I’m still catching up, making sure I know all the material the first time around.”
Anjali Kulkarni grad echoed this sentiment, though she also appreciated the respite from work that Thanksgiving break provided.
“I think it gave me some time to take a step back, regroup and be more mentally prepared for what’s coming,” Kulkarni said, noting the additional stress of her upcoming graduation from her Masters of Engineering program this semester.
Kristen Moon ’25 also said she enjoyed taking time off from schoolwork, but she felt that the University-designated days for Thanksgiving break did not provide enough time for her to travel home.
“I did skip the Monday and Tuesday last week, so, with skipping, [the break] was enough, but I feel like if I had gone to classes on Monday and Tuesday, it wouldn’t have been,” Moon said. “I live in Oregon, so if I didn’t skip, there wouldn’t have been enough time to get home.”
As they begin to study for final exams, students said that additional office hours were a helpful resource.
“Office hours have always been really good for me — being able to go meet with my TAs, my professors,” said Grace Ryan ’24. “I make sure that I’m on track with everything, that I know what I’m preparing for.”
Kelly Jiang grad said she especially appreciates office hours from course teaching assistants, who help make the material more accessible.
“My TAs are great. They’re always there if you have questions, they respond to emails really quickly and they go over the material in a way that we understand a lot better than the professor does,” Jiang, who is concluding her first semester as a mechanical engineering Ph.D. student, said. “They’re a lot less intimidating to go [to] and ask questions.”
Despite this support from professors and course staff, some students expressed frustration at having to take multiple final exams in one day. During finals week, Moon and Crites both have two exams scheduled in one day, with one test in the morning and another at night.
“I wish the two tests in one day were illegal,” Moon said.
Ryan said she wished finals period allowed for more flexibility with rescheduling exams to avoid taking multiple in the same day, though she acknowledged the difficulty in providing this accommodation to every student.
“I know this is a very difficult thing — especially with big classes, because everyone has very different schedules — but I always end up having multiple exams on the same day, and I just wish there was some way around that,” Ryan said.
Although she expressed feeling stressed about finals week, Moon said she appreciates the support from her professors.
“There are a lot of study materials already out. I think [professors] want us to start preparing, and they support us in that way,” Moon said. “They’re encouraging us to study and do well. They’re trying to set us up for success.”
TORONTO, Dec. 1, 2022 /CNW/ - SLGI Asset Management Inc. ("SLGI Asset Management") announced today changes to its Sun Life Money Market Class.
Effective December 1, 2022, SLGI Asset Management will close the Sun Life Money Market Class (the "Class") to new accounts. Any accounts that already hold Series A or Series F shares of the Class may continue to hold, purchase, or switch-in additional Series A Front End or F shares of the Class. Existing pre-authorized contributions to purchase Series A Front End or F shares of the Class may continue.
Series A deferred sales charge and low load shares as well as Series O shares of the Class continue to be fully closed and are not available for purchase or switch-in.
About SLGI Asset Management Inc.
SLGI Asset Management Inc. is a subsidiary of Sun Life Financial Inc. It offers Canadians a diverse lineup of mutual funds and innovative portfolio solutions, empowering them to pursue their financial goals at every life stage. We bring together the strength of one of Canada's most trusted names in financial services, Sun Life, with some of the best asset managers from around the world to deliver a truly global investment platform. As of September 30, 2022, Sun Life Global Investments manages $32.8 billion on behalf of institutional and retail investors from coast-to-coast and is a member of the Sun Life group of companies. For more information visit www.sunlifeglobalinvestments.com or connect with us on Twitter @SLGI_Canada.
About Sun Life
Sun Life is a leading international financial services organization providing asset management, wealth, insurance and health solutions to individual and institutional Clients. Sun Life has operations in a number of markets worldwide, including Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, India, China, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and Bermuda. As of September 30, 2022, Sun Life had total assets under management of $1.27 trillion. For more information please visit www.sunlife.com.
Sun Life Financial Inc. trades on the Toronto (TSX), New York (NYSE) and Philippine (PSE) stock exchanges under the ticker symbol SLF.
Note to editors: All figures in Canadian dollars
Media Relations Contact:
Laura Torchia
Manager, Corporate Communications
T. 416-818-5613
laura.torchia@sunlife.com
SOURCE SLGI Asset Management Inc.
View original content to obtain multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/December2022/01/c2881.html
Planned Parenthood Generation Action, a campus organization that champions sexual education and reproductive justice, is promoting the implementation of Plan B vending machines on campus.
Plan B, along with other morning-after contraception pills, is used to lower the chances of pregnancy due to unprotected sex. Pills can be taken up to five days after unprotected sex, but they are more effective when taken earlier.
After the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade, which gave states the authority to ban or protect abortion, there has been a greater emphasis on emergency contraception. In the wake of the decision, many Americans stocked up on the morning-after pill to better control their reproductive futures.
Plan B vending machines are spreading across college campuses to provide around-the-clock, affordable access to emergency contraception.
“I got inspired by seeing a post on Instagram from Boston University where they had [implemented Plan B vending machines] and reached out for more information,” said Marley Levy ’24, PPGA member.
At Boston University, students spent five years advocating for contraception vending machines on campus. On March 1 the machine was unveiled with a price of $7.25 for Plan B, compared to most retailers that charge $40 to $50.
Through conversations with Cornell Health, PPGA decided to collect survey responses on perspectives towards a Plan B vending machine.
“The survey’s purpose was to gain responses from the community to gauge the need for the machines, price points, where they should go and what should be in them,” Levy said.
While Cornell Health offers emergency contraception, their restricted hours limit access, especially considering emergency contraception is more effective when taken earlier. Furthermore, off-campus pharmacies are not always convenient.
PPGA is working to provide an option where students feel comfortable purchasing emergency contraception.
“I want to assure the community that we are putting thought into the location and understand the desire for a location that is accessible but feels private,” said Levy.
Megan Edwards ’26 said that a Plan B vending machine would be a valuable campus resource.
“I think that a Plan B vending machine on campus is a great idea,” said Edwards. “It would help students worry less about accessibility and time to access emergency contraception.”
Sophie Meng ’26 said that Plan B vending machines promote reproductive choice.
“I think giving students easier access to emergency contraception is a good idea because everyone should be able to choose how they want to handle their unique situation,” Meng said.
Cornell Health had previously considered implementing emergency contraceptive machines on campus but found difficulty gaining adequate funding. PPGA is exploring various possibilities to raise funds.
“In the grand scheme of things, we wouldn’t need an astronomical amount to put our plans into action,” Levy said.
However, Levy said that the University’s strong response to Roe v. Wade proves that reproductive justice is valued on campus.
“I believe that the funding of [Plan B vending machines] would be the University caring for its students,” Levy said.
THIS is the exact time you will find out if an emergency blackout plan will take place and how much you could be paid.
It comes as the National Grid decided not to trigger an emergency blackout plan tomorrow, which would have seen Brits potentially being paid to turn off their energy.
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Earlier today, it was said that the emergency electricity plan could be activated for the first time with supplies tight due in part to problems in the French energy grid.
The demand flexibility service (DFS) scheme, has already been tested twice in the last two weeks but has not yet been run for a live event.
National Grid decided today to not issue the notice to suppliers and households.
But in the future, households will be offered up to £100 by their energy provider if they cut their use at peak times.
The National Grid ESO previously told The Sun the £100 saving is based on households receiving £3 for every kilowatt-hour during the 12 test demonstrations.
The figure represents the electricity reductions the network thinks a typical household might be able to save.
But the exact saving, and how it is distributed to households, will depend on the individual energy suppliers.
Under the DFS scheme, National Grid will pay energy firms rather than households directly to cut power demand in a number of ways.
Households which have signed up to the programme in advance will get a message asking them to turn off appliances at a certain time in exchange for £3 per kilowatt-hour saved.
This could be by stopping running the washing machine or dishwasher until the supply crunch has eased.
If the £3 is fully passed on by the suppliers to customers, that implies payments of up to £20 for each day when requested by National Grid.
Those taking part will be able to earn money for switching off their appliances during peak times amid blackout warnings.
Households can sign up - but only if they have a working smart meter, which means the millions that don't have one, or have issues with theirs, won't be able to apply.
People are being encouraged to sign up with their electricity supplier so they can get money back on their bills.
Those participating through the programme will be sent a message from the network if there is increased pressure on the system.
To qualify, energy usage would need to be reduced in peak times such as 9am to 11am and 4.30pm to 6.30pm.
Customers will typically be notified via text message which days and exact times they can earn cash by reducing their usage.
Suppliers don't have to take part in the scheme, but British Gas, EDF, EON and Octopus have signed up for it.
The emergency blackout could have coincided with the England v Wales World Cup clash.
It comes as the nation is battling a crippling energy crisis, partly due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
It is hoped that by paying people to charge their electric cars at off-peak times and firing up backup coal plants it can offset the risk of outages.
Certain "protected sites" like hospitals, food manufacturers, oil refineries, some ports, financial services, essential water and sewerage installations, major airports and digital and telecommunication services may not experience blackouts.
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Angela McGhee never trusted the tap water flowing from the faucets of her more than century-old home.
The 50-year-old Chatham resident gets her drinking water from store-bought bottles because she suspected her tap water might contain high levels of brain-damaging lead.
Last year, McGhee decided to look into a city of Chicago program that fully paid for replacement of lead service lines for low-income residents. A number of her friends and neighbors are suspicious of the program, McGhee said, but she went ahead. By August, her lead line was replaced with a copper pipe.
“If we don’t have our health, we have nothing else,” she said.
McGhee, who lives with her husband, is one of only 280 Chicago homeowners who have had a lead service line — the connecting pipe between a home and water main — replaced under city-sponsored programs the past two years.
That’s 280 out of an estimated 390,000 lead service lines — the most lead water lines in any city in the United States.
Lead service lines were still being installed in Chicago as recently as 1986 even though the metal’s harmful health effects were well known by then.
Now, beginning in January, the city will be required under state law to replace lead service pipes every time there is a break or leak in a water line. That will force the city to replace what’s estimated will be at least 4,000 lead lines a year, perhaps 5,000.
Any city residents with a break or leak in a water service line should call 311.
The new law means Chicago will finally begin to see more progress on replacing the lead lines.
To pay for a large portion of the program, city officials say they will close soon on a low-interest loan from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for $336 million over five years.
Lead exposure is a critically important public health issue. The metal can cause damage to the brain and nervous system, putting people, particularly children, who drink tainted water at considerable risk. Pediatricians and health advocates say there are no safe levels of lead.
Despite lead having been detected in the water in homes across the city, Chicago complies with federal law. The EPA has set a level of 15 parts per billion as a maximum for drinking water from public utilities.
Two years ago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a relatively small pilot program that would begin with 600 lead service line replacements paid by the city for residents who qualified based on income and other requirements.
While most of the lead lines replaced in Chicago were removed through the equity program that McGhee took part in, the number fell well short of the city’s goal. There were just 225 equity program participants.
Other replacements were done through additional programs, including one paid for entirely by homeowners.
On the South Side, contractors move machinery used for boring underground as part of a new method of replacing lead service lines.
Anthony Vazquez / Sun-Times
Lightfoot has gotten credit for being the first Chicago mayor to promise a solution to what’s been a long-standing problem. But she also has drawn criticism for missing the goal of the pilot program and for moving slowly on lead pipe replacements.
Chicago Department of Water Management Commissioner Andrea Cheng, a civil engineer who has the chemical symbol for water tattooed on her right wrist, is faced with the task of turning the corner on the lead pipe problem.
The water department has about 2,000 employees and plans to hire more than 300 more for work related to lead pipe replacements. The jobs include street crews, outreach workers and others. Replacements will largely be done by city crews, but some work will be handled by contractors.
“It’s frustrating when I hear people say we’re doing this slowly,” Cheng said. “The reality is they don’t know how hard we had to work to get to the point of doing any at all.”
Cheng said the city struggled to get people to go through a lengthy application process but that the pilot taught her department how to Boost the process. She said she hopes to meet Lightfoot’s original goal next year of replacing 600 lead lines with $15 million in yearly funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
People who want to apply to get their lead pipes replaced can do so online at https://www.leadsafechicago.org/lead-service-line-replacement.
As part of another effort, City Hall got a $4 million forgivable loan in July from state environmental officials, who funnel federal tax dollars, to cities. That money will be used to pay for replacement of lead lines at daycare centers. Cheng is aiming for 120 such replacements next year.
In addition to those programs, officials hope to remove lead lines when full water main or sewer main replacements are done. It’s unclear how many homeowners will benefit from that. A pilot program in Little Village has been delayed for months.
Under state law, Chicago has 50 years to replace its lead lines. But the clock on that deadline doesn’t start ticking until 2027.
The current plan for replacements in Chicago don’t have enough money to pay for all of them, a tab that will be in the billions of dollars.
Raising water bills appears to be out of the question for now. Cheng said the city can continue to borrow money, though she’s hoping there will be more federal money.
Under the federal bipartisan infrastructure law, the state got $107 million for all of Illinois. Chicago will need more.
Erik Olson, senior strategic director of public health for the private Natural Resources Defense Council, is among the critics of the thresholds the EPA allows for lead levels in water and also of Chicago’s slow pace of replacing lead lines.
“We welcome the fact that the city is talking about taking this issue more seriously,” Olson said. “The problem is this city has the largest lead service line problem in the country.”
Other cities, including Newark, New Jersey, have done better, Olson said. Newark replaced 23,000 in under three years. A lawsuit filed by Olson’s organization jump-started that effort.
Cheng said that when dangerous lead levels are found, the city has a process to address the problem right away and that protective filters have been provided to tens of thousands of Chicagoans.
She said other initiatives also are underway, including a simplification of the home testing process.
Willie Brickhouse, 65, who owns a home on the South Side with a just-replaced lead line, said he was thinking about the health effects of lead. Retired for a decade, he applied last year and qualified.
Willie Brickhouse thinking about the health effects of lead, which is why he signed up for a city program to remove an old water pipe.
Anthony Vazquez / Sun-Times
On a recent chilly morning, a crew of about a half-dozen city contract workers just outside Brickhouse’s home broke open a hole in concrete to lower a machine to bore underneath and across the street into his basement to replace a lead service line.
The workers used a trenchless technique, new in Chicago, that involves breaking up smaller portions of a street and sidewalk to bore underground and reach the basement of a home to replace lead pipes. It’s cheaper because it requires less digging and less restoration afterward.
That could be key to lowering the city’s estimated cost of up to $30,000 per lead line replaced — and making more replacements possible.
In Newark, the pipes are replaced at a cost of $5,000 to $10,000 each.
At a hearing in Chicago last April, U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, questioned Cheng about why Chicago’s cost estimates are at least three times higher, on average, than those in any other city.
Cheng said there are complexities with the city’s underground infrastructure, and more importantly, the trenchless technology wasn’t allowed by the state until a waiver was granted earlier this year.
“This can be done, and it can be done in an expeditious way,” Duckworth said in an interview. “But we’re going to have to put on our big boy pants and make some key decisions on how we’re going to go about doing this.
“There has to be willpower behind it,” Duckworth said. “I’m going to keep asking those tough questions and pushing and prodding everyone involved and say: We have to do this.”
Boring machinery is used to replace lead service lines on the South Side.
Anthony Vazquez / Sun-Times
Brett Chase’s reporting on the environment and public health is made possible by a grant from The Chicago Community Trust.
