Deputy Commissioner of Haveri district Krishna Bajpai has directed the District Adult Education Officer to chalk out programmes to increase literacy rate among women in the district.
He was chairing an executive committee meeting of the District Literacy Committee at his office in Haveri on Wednesday.
Stating that making illiterate persons literate was a noble work, Mr. Bajpai asked the officials to take assistance of various non-governmental organisations, industrialists and businessmen in addressing the issue of low literacy rate among women in the district. He said only through their assistance and systematic planning, the district would be able to achieve a literacy rate of 95% in the district.
The Deputy Commissioner said literacy rate among men in the district was 84.22%, while it was 70.65% among women. “The average literacy rate in the district is 77.6% and the difference between men and women is 13.57%, which needs to be addressed immediately. To bridge the gap, more focus should be on literacy programmes for women. And efforts should be made to ensure 95% literacy by 2021,” he said.
Mr. Bajpai also directed the officials of all departments to extend cooperation and actively participate in literacy programmes.
District Adult Education Officer M.H. Patil briefed the meeting about the literacy programmes held in the district and the progress achieved. He said that during 2018-19, 25,400 students were at the evaluation stage and in 2019-20, 15,000 illiterates were covered under the survey.