Rajahmundry: Adult education authorities are taking up literacy drive for the benefit of mainly ST and SC communities under State Literacy Mission at a cost of Rs 41 lakh in seven mandals in Rampachodavaram Agency in East Godavari.
Based on a survey, the authorities have identified as many as 83,000 non-literate persons aged above 15 years of age in the agency mandals and the authorities have targeted to make them literate by about 50% of such population.
Accordingly, the interested Dwcra women of Indira Kranthi Padham and others were taken as volunteers to take up the literacy drive with a gram panchayat or a habitation as a base unit.
In the enrolment drive carried out for learners, the authorities managed to enroll over 12,000 so far and still the drive is being carried out to enroll a few more interested learners for the literacy programme.
As many as 809 education centres are set up and the same number of volunteers one for each centre are also appointed. The learners will be taught how to read and write and do some simple arithmetic.
They will be given study material of Primer-1 and Primer-2, a note book, a pencil, an eraser and a sharpener and the study material is prepared by the directorate of adult education.
The duration of the course will be for a period of six months and the learners who successfully completed their literacy course will be awarded certificates.
Though the literacy drive is aimed to educate people aged between 15 and 60 years, the authorities are concentrating mainly the young tribals living in tribal habitations in Agency areas in order to help them become literate and pursue formal education by enrolling in schools and colleges availing the financial assistance in the form of scholarships from the state government.
This move is aimed to help them pursue studies and find a job and eak out their livelihood on their own. In case of the adults who cannot to go regular schools, the authorities are planning to enroll them in open schools to help them pursue higher studies.
Though the literacy programme is well planned and efforts are on to implement it properly, there seems to be no provision to pay even honorarium to the volunteers and they have to work purely out of their own interest. Another setback is lack of supervision at mandal level as the proposal to appoint graduates as mandal co-ordinators by paying wages is pending.
Adult education deputy director P. Lakshmibhai said, “We have started literacy drive in Agency recently and we are motivating mainly the young tribals to enroll and become literates.”
