The government’s 169.9 million US dollars project-four under the Non-Formal Education (NFE) programme to literate 2.29 crore people of the country is progressing fast, official sources said yesterday, reports BSS.

Education Ministry officials said the project-four, ten times bigger than the donor supported NFE project, is a part of the government's plan to achieve the goal of Education For All (EFA) by the year 2006.

Project-four is a gigantic project under the original plan launched in 1990 which will be Implemented solely from the government's own resources." said the officials.

The objective of the entire NFE programme is to make 3.44 crore people literate by the year 2006.

Project-four was launched basing the performance of the

on-going 51* million US dollars World Bank supported NFE project.

The World Bank in its project status report released recently lauded the government initiative saying, "the overall literacy rate is increasing as the government is giving education a high priority.’

' The objective of the World Bank supported NFE is to reach an estimated 25 lakh learners of the 15-24 age group of whom 13 lakh are females. Ine project was launched in the middle of June last year for completing by June 2001.

The World Bank termed the performance of its project as satisfactory saying the programme has so far progressed well in terms of improving and expanding Non-Formal Education. the bank's project status report said.

It also said that the bank's

project has achieved 64 per cent female participation during phase-1 of the NFE delivery programme, which is well over the project target of 50 per cent.

The bank 1$ rating the performance of the project based on successful completion of the first-phase of the programme by 95 NGOs whereby NFE courses were imparted to 168,000 learners.

The status report said currently 138 NGOs are running 14.835 centres with an estimated 4.45.050 learners under the project. It said that 194 NGOs were selected for delivering NFE through 14.595 centres and reaching about 4.37,850 learners.

A committee has already selected NGOs for the fourth phase and these NGOs will run 17.961 centres where 4.05,900 learners will be trained.