In yet another initiative to help the poor tribals, police in Sonbhadra opened a free-of-cost computer training centre for girls and boys of Naxal-affected areas at Reserve Police lines on Saturday.
“The centre has been opened with the help of some private firms and a few NGOs based here,†said Sonbhadra SP Preetinder Singh.
According to Singh, 10 computers have been installed at the centre and two private instructors would provide training for job-oriented courses to children belonging to poor families of Scheduled Caste and Tribes living in the areas bordering the Naxal-affected states of Jharkhand, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. “We would only allow the students of distant tribal areas to take admission in this centre and none from the city area,†he added.
Besides the private instructors, a team of policemen of the rank of sub-inspector and head constable who are trained in computer courses has also been engaged at the centre for supervision.
The police have initiated the process of getting the computer centre registered as a society so that it could issue certificates to the students once they complete the course.
The police are also planning to attach the centre to Uttar Pradesh Development Systems Corporation Ltd (UPDESCO) and seek grants from the Social Welfare Department under various schemes to run the centre.
The process of selecting the first batch of 20 students has begun and training would begin by next week. The minimum qualification required to get admission to the centre is matriculation and in beginning the students would be trained in MS Office and data entry. Later, Singh said, they would be provided training for advanced courses.