PALAKKAD: The examinations under the special tribal literacy continuing education scheme in Attappadi, being conducted by the State Literacy Mission, began in various tribal settlements on Saturday. The three-day examinations will conclude on Monday evening. A total of 2,347 persons from 171 settlements in the three panchayats of Agali, Pudur and Sholayur in Attappadi are writing the examinations. The largest number of persons writing the examinations is in Pudur panchayat. There are 1,011 persons writing their examinations in 47 hamlets of Pudur panchayat, 866 persons in Agali panchayat and 470 in Sholayur panchayat.
The programme in Agali panchayat was inaugurated in Mele Agali settlement by the panchayat president Ambika Lakshmanan.The programme in Pudur panchayat was inaugurated by president Jyothi Anil Kumar at Elachivazhi community hall. The function of Sholayur panchayat was inaugurated by the president Ramamoorthy and in Vayalur, it was opened by district panchayat standing committee chairman P C Neethu.
M Mohammed Basheer, assistant project co-ordinator of the district literacy mission, said that in places where exams could not be conducted on Saturday, they will be held in the remaining two days.
He said the literacy programme in Attappadi began in 2009. Originally it was planned to declare Attappadi as ‘Fully Adivasi literate’ on April 18, 2020.
It was planned to conduct an exam in the first week of March 2020 and for those who fail it was to be conducted again in the third week of March 2020.Subsequently, the declaration of full literacy was to be done on April 18, 2020, by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.However, with the Covid outbreak, all plans went awry. Later, a survey was conducted to see if online teaching and examinations could be conducted. But it was dropped after it was found that there was no connectivity in some hamlets and also some did not have smartphones.
The examinations were of three parts. One was on questions for which answers had to be written. Secondly oral questions were to be asked and finally mathematics fundamentals were to be asked.Mohammed Basheer said that basically it was to empower the Adivasis to write their names, write withdrawal slips in banks and to compute figures for their day-to-day needs. At the state level, the special tribal literacy continuing education programme is being conducted only in Attappadi and Wayanad.