AGARTALA, September 19 (TIWN): “Government’s literacy campaigns do not necessarily aims to make people literate only but also we want to achieve the broader objective of poverty alleviation in for obtaining self reliance”, stated Chief Minister Manik Sarkar. “For the same, we have adopted the skill development programmes,” further informed Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, while presiding over the General Council meeting of State Literacy Mission Authority (SLMA) here at State Secretariat, yesterday.

The chief Minister has also envisaged of awarding some financially viable projects to the neew literate ones under the ‘Swabalamban’ scheme of the government. “Once they are trained by the skill development training tey will be able to be organize as a formal self dependent group, which will enable them to get bank loans and other financial assistance ”, he further added.

In this regard, the District Magistrates (DMs) have been directed to bring all the trained personjs within the purview of various economic development schemes of different government department so the eligible ones can be selected as the beneficiary of the government multi-faceted socioeconomic development projects. Regarding the same, a cell is most likely to come up at district level under the authoritative supervision of the respective DMs.  Furthermore, the task has also been forming an enriched cell of the resource persons for imparting proper skill development training has also been entrusted on the DMs, within next October. At frequent interval, the resource persons would also be provided with orientation training. Primarily, the experts would train the newly literate candidates on the theory and application of agriculture, horticulture, fishery and repairing and maintenance of sewing and electronic equipment and appliances.

For ensuring transparency of funds the DMs have been asked to have the audit work done properly apart from making it sure that no liquid money should be there in any one’s hand. Finance Minister Bhanu Lal Saha, TTAADC’s Chief Executive Member Ranjit Debbarma and Chief Secretary G.Kameswara Rao were also present in the meeting.