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NGO threatens stir

Staff Correspondent

"If the Government fails to start continuing education programme in Himachal"

SHIMLA: Himachal Gyan Vigyan Samiti, a noted mass voluntary organisation with a membership of more than 37,000 in the hill State, has decided to launch an agitation if the Government fails to initiate the continuing education programme (CEP) in the State.

"All the results achieved in literacy and education so far would be null and void if this programme, which is essentially required to support the earlier campaigns of total literacy and post literacy, is not started at once," said Dr. Kuldeep Tanwar, Secretary of Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti and also State president of the organisation.

Addressing a press conference here on the eve of World Literacy Day, he said Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh had promised last year to set off the continuing education programme in the State. Mr. Singh was himself there on Literacy Day to address a literacy rally in the Subzi Mandi grounds last year. Expressing surprise at the indifference shown by the Government here, Dr. Tanwar said that the Government was claiming to spend Rs.1208 crores on education but was not ready to give the matching grant of just Rs.1.25 crores for the continuing education programme. This is otherwise a Central Government programme and the total budget allocation available for Himachal is Rs.55.84 crores. The Central share is Rs 47.44 crores and the State share is just Rs.8.40 crores, he informed.

This programme is being run in 314 districts of 24 States and Union Territories and an amount of Rs.815.30 crores has already been released to them. In Himachal at least 7,000 unemployed youth could have got jobs as `Preraks' in 3,243 panchayats with honorarium ranging from Rs.500 to Rs.1,200 for at least five years. It could have strengthened the extension outreach through the continuing education centres at the grassroots level by covering the all un-reached sections.

Calling the Government claims of Himachal as second only to Kerala in literacy as false, the Gyan Vigyan Samiti activists said that half of the rural women in the districts of Chamba, Sirmaur and Kullu were totally illiterate. An estimated 1,243,142 people above seven years of age are still illiterate constituting 20.45 per cent of the total population. Another estimated 497,974 people in the age group of nine years to 45 years are also still illiterate constituting 8.28 per cent of the population, and 71 per cent of them are women.

Asked if the Samiti was becoming a political threat to the political parties in the State, the activists replied: "Mass education always threatens the political power."

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