Hyderabad: While they walked into the jails marking their entry in the register with thumbprints, almost every single prisoner who was in a Telangana prison in the last six months, has left marking their exit with a signature.
Over 10,000 prisoners have been taught to “read and write” by their fellow “educated inmates” and officials. As of now, outsiders aren’t allowed though many have shown an interest to teach in the prisons, said officials.
Initiated by the Telangana Prisons department eight months ago, “Vidya Daanam Yojana,” appears to have given fruitful results and officials say that it is a hit with the prisoners.
The scheme, initially launched on a small scale at the Chanchalguda prison in July, was applied in all jails over time. The scheme was conceptualized because of the high illiteracy rate among prisoners. Out of over 99,000 prisoners who were lodged in Telangana jails in 2013, nearly 90 per cent were illiterate, as per official statistics.
This figure includes the total number of people who were shifted to all prisons in the state. Many of them stayed for as briefly as a couple of days before they were bailed out. As many were petty criminals and uneducated, officials came up with the idea of educating them to read and write.
"We are interested in making them literate so that they use the skills learnt here to find jobs once they leave the prison. Also, we aren’t splurging money on it and are using people in the prisons, including prison officials, to educate them," said Telangana director general of prisons V.K. Singh.
"The scheme operates like a full-fledged school. We have set timings for the classes with breaks in between. Study period is between 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm,” he added. Currently, there are over 6000 prisoners, both male and female, in the state jails and it’s mandatory for the uneducated prisoners to attend classes every single day.
