KATHMANDU, Nepal–If the government’s plan is anything to believe, the country will be fully literate by the end of the current fiscal year.
Non-Formal Education Centre (NFEC), a government agency that carries out literacy classes across the country, informed that only 1,745,334 people above 15 years of age are illiterate.
Though National Census 2011 puts Nepal’s literacy rate at 65.9 percent, over 3 million adults have been made literate in three years since the Census, taking the literacy rate to 84 percent.
The government has declared 2014-15 as the Illiteracy Elimination Year.
A door-to-door survey showed there were 4,054,649 uneducated adults in the fiscal year 2012-13. Around 915,000 of them became literate through campaigns held in the year while 1.34 million benefitted from classes in the fiscal 2013-14. This still leaves 1.74 million illiterate.
The Centre has decided to recruit some 20,000 teachers and mobilise students and volunteers. Rs 1.05 billion are set to be spent.
As per the data of NFEC, 1.46 million illiterate people are from 16 districts in Tarai and Nuwakot, the worst among the Hill districts. The government has already declared Sindhupalchok, Lalitpur, Palpa, Dhading and Mustang as “total literate” on the basis of 95 percent literacy rate.