MADHYAPUR: The government has embarked on a literacy campaign aimed at providing basic reading and writing skills for adults over 15 years old. The campaign will kick off nationwide, beginning February 14 (Falgun 1st, 2066 BS) and is a continuity of the previous campaign, said Babu Kaji Karki, officiating director, Non-Formal Education Centre (NFEC), today. The erstwhile Maoist-led government had launched a two-year National Literacy Campaign in January 14, 2009 for those in the age brackets of 15 to 60. “The UCPN-M government had executed the programme in two phases in the last fiscal — 2008/2009 — but we are going to have it in one phase this year,” said Karki. As part of the campaign, the government is going to run literacy classes as per the convenience of the local inhabitants, he added. He also claimed that the government was simplifying the implementation process and make the programme more effective than that of the last year. To accomplish the task of simplifying the process, the government has amended the National Literacy Campaign Programme Implementation Directives-2008. With the amendment, the new directives empowers the District Education Offices (DEOs), instead of the District Development Committees (DDCs), which had so far exercised the authority over the execution of the programmes across the country. “We had to face many hurdles when the local bodies exercised the power in the last fiscal. The feedback and responses were untimely and they were unsatisfactory as well,” Karki said, adding that there was a need to hand over the rights and duties to some other bodies rather than the earlier ones to make them more accountable and responsible towards their duty.