Government sets 100% literacy goal

HYDERABAD: For a concerted effort to achieve 100 per cent literacy in state within a year, the government is planning to bring all the departments concerned to work in tandem with the Adult Education department. The officials of Adult Education have been asked to prepare a comprehensive action plan and the funds required to achieve it.Chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, who held a detailed review on literacy programme in the state, asked the departments like the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP), self help groups, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), rural development, minorities welfare, social welfare, and tribal welfare to put in maximum effort and coordinate with the Adult Education department to achieve the goal of 100 per cent literacy. Under the first phase of the Saakshar Bharat (SB) programme of the central government, to raise overall literacy rate to 80 per cent and reduce the gender disparities in literacy levels, 19 districts in Andhra Pradesh were selected. The interim target of SB programme is 79.53 lakh non-literates under the programme which was launched in October last year.14.80 lakh non-literates were enrolled in 1,45,688 centres run by about 1.45 lakh volunteers. It was decided to form a trust for public and private partnership for adopting particular areas by providing financial support etc.to SB Programme, particularly for Vocational Skill Development Programme. In all, about 10.76 lakh were made literate and 10.12 lakh of them appeared for National Institute of Open School Test.Preparatory activities have been initiated for the second phase of the literacy programme to cover 16 lakh illiterates this year. The programme will be implemented through 38,000 village coordinators by enrolling 30 non-literates in each group and it is also proposed to cover 90 lakh non-literates with the support of other departments. A senior official said that the government took up a house-hold survey and identified about 1.8 crore illiterates in the state who will be covered over the next two years.