Kathmandu, November 21:

The Ministry of Education (MoE) is preparing the first stage of the National Literacy Campaign (NLC) from January 14 next year. The campaign is being launched to educate illiterate people throughout the country within two years.

The MoE has already prepared ‘National Literacy Campaign Program Implementation Directives-2008’ to execute the programmme at various levels.

It is estimated that some 7.8 million of the 11.7 million people in the 15-60 age group are illiterate. Speaking at a press conference organised here today, Ram Swarup Sinha, acting secretary of MoE, said that the ministry would collect fresh data of the illiterate people throughout the country before the execution of the programme.

“The government has realised that the social and economic development of the county is impossible without educating illiterate people. That is why we have launched this campaign,” Sinha said.

Sushil Pandey, director of Non Formal Education Centre (NFEC), said, “Different committees have been formed at the central and local levels to execute the programmes effectively.”

The textbooks required for the programme will be published in local languages like Abadhi, Maithali, Bhojpuri, Tamang, Tharu and Dotel, apart from Nepali. Under the campaign, the teaching materials will be managed by the local literacy classes. Likewise, funds will be provided to the VDCs and municipalities from the centre through district development committees.

The NLC would be executed under two phases, each having the duration of three months. The volunteers for the first phase should have an SLC while those passing intermediate/+2 level will be required for the second phase.

The ministry is targeting to literate around 1.2 million people by running 41,430 literacy classes in the first phase and 1.3 million people by running 47,870 classes in the second phase.

Dependig on the number of illiterate people, each ward in the VDC will have one class each while a ward in the municipalities will run three classes.