Kerala - Kannur   

Paloli launches education project

Staff Reporter

Says decentralisation has helped local bodies to address local issues

ENCOURAGING WORDS: Minister for Local Self-Government Paloli Mohammed Kutty inaugurating the Mukulam project in Kannur on Sunday.

KANNUR: Minister for Self-Government Paloli Mohammed Kutty has said that decentralisation has strengthened local bodies to effectively intervene to address local issues, including those in the education and health sectors.

Inaugurating the `Mukulam' project for SSLC students launched by the district panchayat at the Government High School at Kallyasseri here on Sunday, the Minister said that the decentralisation allowed the local bodies to identify issues and implement projects to solve them. The district panchayat's comprehensive education programme for 2006-07 was such an intervention to give special coaching of SSLC students in English and Mathematics, he said.

Stating that great achievements made by the State in the education and health sectors turned it into a model State, the Minister said that it was the progressive and egalitarian approach that had given students from poorer backgrounds access to higher education. The State could somehow survive the crisis in the agricultural sector thanks to the employment of thousands of educated youth abroad, he said.

The Minister said that the higher education sector in the State was the victim of the previous Government's efforts to ignore Government schools and colleges. The Left Democratic Front (LDF) Government was now trying to reverse the previous Government's policies that had ensured access to higher education only to the rich. The controversy over the Kerala Professional Colleges Act was the result of an attempt to view the enactment from a communal perspective, he said. The Government was firm in its stand against a section of vested interests exploiting the higher education sector in the name of minority rights, he said.

Presiding over the function, district panchayat president K.K. Narayanan said that the Mukulam project was aimed at giving SSLC students special coaching in English and Mathematics as a large number of SSLC students in the district were found to have not fared well in the two subjects. He said that the special coaching programme would be extended to all subjects from next year. He also said that the district panchayat would introduce a programme to allow primary school dropouts in the 18-50 age group to appear for fourth standard equivalent examination. A sample survey had found that there were 60,000 people who had not passed fourth standard examination, he added.

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