At least 60 volunteers from different reputed organisations will help the illiterate Tihar inmates learn basic reading and writing skills.
The volunteers include housewives, students, retired professors, doctors, engineers, chartered accountants and employees with MNCs.
“This project has been undertaken to make inmates 100 per cent literate. We had invited voluntary help from people in an advertisement. We received over 100 mails from different individuals and organisations offering to help us in our mission to make all inmates literate,” a senior Tihar Jail official said.
The jail authorities had advertised through newspapers in November about the “Padho Ya Padhao” (study or teach) project undertaken by them with the help of National Literacy Mission of the ministry of human resource development.
“People who volunteered help came from BITS Pilani, Cantonment Board Secondary School Delhi Cantonment, IIT Roorkee and Doordarshan, among others,” he said.
More than one hundred inmates were selected in the first campus placement conducted in the Tihar Jail premises in phases this year.
“Inmates who were selected in the placement drive were offered salaries between `84,000 and `6,00,000 per annum. Majority of those selected had enrolled in the ‘Padho ya Padhao’ project,” he said.