LITERACY DRIVE

Literacy centres in problem

 

COOCH BEHAR, Oct. 29: The Continuing Education Centres (CEC) in Cooch Behar district has been suffering from various problems for a long. About fifty percent of the centres are yet to come under roofs of their own buildings.

 

There are 1,008 CECs in this district and the number of learners in each of the centre is about 150. The total number of learners is more than 1,65,000. It is hard to run effectively a centre with so many learners. On behalf of Jela Sarbik Saksharata Samity it was proposed that there should be 2,000 centres but National Literacy Mission (NLM) failed to approve the proposal. As NLM extends the required fund to run the CECs it is not possible to launch extra centres without their consent, said the Cooch Behar Sadar SDO and also the officer-in-charge of the district literacy cell, Mr Jayanta Maity.

 

Many of the CECs in Cooch Behar district are running in private houses due to dearth of government buildings. They conveyed the directorate of mass education about the problem with a request to add necessary infrastructure, Mr Maity said. Presently, they have to keep the educational equipments in private houses due to lack of own buildings, he added. At the same time he admitted that they received Rs 2-crore from the NLM in 2007-08 for disbursement of honorariums of the teachers and to buy essential materials.

 

Mr Maity said they asked all the centres to give emphasis on motivation and monitoring to bring more learners in the CECs. Income generation programme is also being introduced to make the poor learners financially benefited, the OC of district literacy cell said. They are also trying to get the neo-literates admitted in Class IV to bring them under normal school education, Mr Maity said. []