Sibal invites public units to invest in education sector

The programme, which aims at making 70 million people literate in coming years, has a focus on women and marginalised communities.

He asked the PSEs to set up a five-member committee to discuss and formulate plans to help the government in raising the overall literacy rate to 80 per cent by 2012. The scheme was launched in September last year. Sibal has been advocating for Public-Private-Partnership in setting up education infrastructure and even for model schools in backward districts.

The Minister asked PSEs, like Shipping Corporation and GAIL, to submit a report to the HRD Ministry within three months.

“In the next two years we will be setting up 81,000 adult education centres (as part of the programme). We have already given grants of Rs 325 crore to 19 states. You (PSEs) can help us both in terms of talent and investment,” Sibal told the heads of PSEs and banks at an interactive session held by the Standing Conference of Public Enterprises (SCOPE) in New Delhi. He said the government is currently implementing the scheme in 167 of the total 367 districts identified across 19 states covering about 3.83 crore illiterates.

“You have the money, talent and physical assets...You can use each one of these for taking education forward. You can even rent the assets to set up skill development centres in your physical establishments.

“In the area of setting up schools, we are going for Public-Private partnerships... You can join too by building physical assets for us as part of your corporate social responsibility. Other areas include providing incentives to volunteers whose output is of a certain level,” he said.