Dharwad zilla panchayat embarks on intensified literacy campaign

Dharwad: The zilla panchayat will embark on a mission to make the district 100% literate in two years. It will launch a literacy campaign on Gandhi Jayanti by opening Special Learning Centres (SLC) in 36 gram panchayats. The campaign will also be extended to urban parts of the district.
Already the Union and state governments have embarked on measures to enhance the literacy rate and the survey of illiterates has already begun. For 2022-23, under the Link Document project, a total of 10,360 illiterates have been identified in 10 gram panchayats of the district and they will be taught to read and write.
This apart, the chief minister under the total literacy programme has given a target of 18 gram panchayats this year and 18 gram panchayats for the next year to be made totally literate. However, Dharwad ZP aims to make all the 36 gram panchayats fully literate in one year only.
ZP CEO Suresh Itnal told TOI that the total sanitation programme taken up in the district has helped end open defecation in most villages and now the literacy campaign has been taken up.
As per statistics, the average literacy rate in the district is 80%. While the literacy rate in urban areas is 84%, it is 76% in rural areas. Moreover, women are less literate compared to their male counterparts with only 65% women are literate and 35% are illiterates.
Under the total literacy programme for the year 2022-23, the ZP will organise special learning activities to 29,000 illiterates in 36 gram panchayats.
Officials from Adult Education, Public Instruction, Collegiate Education and Women and Child Welfare departments will be resource persons to teach illiterates read, write and perform banking transactions.
The Special Learning Centers would be conducted after working hours for two to three hours a day and it will be a one-year programme.
Construction workers, farm labourers, transgenders, rehabilitated devadasis, slum dwellers and pourakarmikas will be given training.
Volunteers have been appointed as resource persons to teach, besides, government schoolteachers and interested college students would be engaging classes, said Itnal.