Kathmandu, November 19:

The government officials today said literacy campaign was a national programme and everyone, including government officers, teachers, journalists and all Nepalis, should help the government achieve the target within the stipulated time.

Speaking at an interaction programme organised by Education Journalists’ Group, Ram Prabesh Yadav, spokesperson for Ministry of Education,

today said the campaign could not achieve success without the support of the stakeholders concerned.Dibya Kala Shrestha, deputy director of Non-Formal Education Centre, said the government was busy formulating the directives to execute programmes for literacy campaign.

The government announced to initiate the literacy campaign through its policy and programme 2008/09, for which the government has already allocated Rs 1,040 million to conduct the programme for this fiscal year.

According to Shrestha, several committees under the chairmanship of Prime Minister, Education Minister and Education Secretary have been formed at the central level and committees under the chairmanship of District Education Officer and others have been formed at local level to execute the programme.

She said the first phase of literacy campaign would start from January 14 for three months and the second phase would be for another six months.

However, the teachers were not satisfied with the way the government was acting without consulting the stakeholders concerned to draft the directives.

Keshav Bhattarai, president of the Teachers’ Union of Nepal, said the campaign launched by the government was a dream hard to achieve. He said, “The stakeholder concerned have been ignored by the government while formulating the directives.”

“First of all the government needs to come at a realistic figure of illiterate people across the country to make the programme more effective and result oriented,” he said.

According to the government data, there are around 78 lakh illiterate people in the country while the literacy campaign would cover only 1,216,000 of them in the first year.