Officials at the Non-formal Education Center (NFEC), who initially claimed to have prepared all the groundwork for the campaign, say that the government is yet to recruit volunteers for the multi-billion rupees campaign. The campaign targets to educate more than four million people above the age of 15 in the next three years. [break]
“We are almost prepared for the campaign as the village development committees are in the final stages of recruiting volunteers for the campaign,” said Gopal Bhattarai, deputy director of the Non-formal Education Center (NFEC).
The government plans to recruit 207,000 volunteers and 20,700 monitoring officers to educate 13.8 million people annually.
Apart from reading and writing, people enrolled in the non-formal education classes would also be taught to use mobile phone and calculator, open bank account and receive money from remittance agencies.
The finance ministry has earmarked Rs 400 million for the first year of the campaign though the campaign is expected to cost Rs 1.38 billion. One volunteer or a teacher would cover 20 persons per day, as per the NFEC´s latest estimation.
Meanwhile, experts have said the previous projects carried out by NFEC had been a failure. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics the literacy rate has grown by a mere 11.8 percent in the years from 2001-2011though the government spent Rs 26.5 billion every year on the literacy campaign. It also said that only three percent of the population had received education through non-formal classes.
NFEC survey conducted in 2011 shows that more than four million people above the age of 15 are still illiterate.
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