Job oriented courses in anvil in Puducherry

Puducherry, Mar 1 (UNI) The Puducherry administration is contemplating to introduce job-oriented courses in higher educational institutions soon, Minister for Education M O H F Shajahan said here today.

Participating in the ''Bharat Nirman'' function organsied by the PIB, Chennai here, he said the Centre had introduced the 'Sarvasiksha Abhiyan' scheme to educate all.

However in Puducherry, the government had gone one step ahead and was taking steps to provide quality education to all. The government was allocating 25 per cent in the budget for education and as a result Puducherry was number one in primary education among the small states and number two in higher education, he said.

He said Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram in his current budget had given priority to education sector especially for creation of infrastrucutre.

The territorial administration was also according priority to the development of infrastructure in government schools, he said adding that in the last eight months as many as 1600 teachers posts were filled up and presently there was a situation that there was no scarcity of teachers in government schools, he said.

Speaking on the occasion UCO Bank manager E.Ezhumalai said the bank had disbursed loans to the tune of Rs one crore at the 'Bharat Nirman' function. Stating that the nationalised banks were playing a vital role in the economic development of the union territory, Ezhumalai said out of the Rs 3000 crore deposit in all the banks here Rs 1600 crore was being provided as advances.

Though compact in size, Puducherry has 110 bank branches, he added.

Participating in the function Mr Padmanabhan , a top offical of the United india Insurance company said that the company had introduced the ''students safety policy'' under which the parents would benifit in the event of the death of the student and the company would bear the entire fees of the student for the course he is studying in the event of the death of the parents.

UNI