A fresh row has erupted over the state’s literacy rate. While UNESCO maintains that the literacy rate in the state has come down to 85 per cent, the Kerala State Literacy Mission officials here insist it is 93.99 per cent. However, it remains a fact that about 20 lakh persons in the state are illiterate.
UNESCO director and representative to India, Shigeru Aoyagi, said the state’s literacy rate that stood at 100 per cent during the 1990s came down to 85 per cent.
“Only 85 per cent of the people in Kerala can now read and write though the state had full literacy during the 1980s,” he said at a workshop organised as part of the ongoing Reading Week celebrations jointly organised by the state government and the PN Panicker Foundation here on Friday.
Meanwhile, state literacy mission director Prof. P Alassankutty said as per the 2011 census figures, the literacy rate in the state was 93.99 per cent.
“We do not know on what basis the UNESCO official said it is 85 percent. Actually, the literacy rate that had gone down to about 90.7 percent in 2001 is now moving up,” he said.
A majority of the migrant labourers in the state are illiterate. However, they could not be considered to be part of the state’s population, he said.
Education minister Abdu Rabb, while inaugurating the workshop, said, “20 lakh people in state are illiterate.” Alassankutty, who agreed with it, said the literacy mission was initiating various steps with the aim of attaining full literacy among the people between the age of 17 and 60 by 2017.”
“A challenging task for us is to educate the members of the tribal communities. We are initiating various programmes to address this issue,” he said.