Ananthan and Sivananthan are part of an elite batch of coconut tree climbers with their own space on the worldwide web.
Rural portal puts up database of workers in the northern district of Kerala
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Ananthan and Sivananthan are part of an elite batch of coconut tree climbers with their own space on the worldwide web. They are among the 38 experts in their field listed on a government-run website of available climbers in Azheekode panchayat, Kannur district.
The soon-to-be launched portal has been put together by Akshaya IT dissemination programme in association with Unesco and covers nine panchayats - Azheekode, Pinarayi, Pappinisseri, Sreekandapuram, Malur, Eramam-Kuttoor, Muzhuppilangad, Payam and Vengad - and Thalasseri municipality, in Kannur district.
“We started work on the project in association with Unesco a year ago. The rural portal is a forum to highlight the local community’s problems and elicit solutions from the authorities and the experts. It’s an interactive portal,” Akshaya assistant district coordinator C Bhaskaran said.
But the highlight of the portal is the labour bank, which has listed 27 job categories ranging from mason and carpenter to videographer and taxi driver. “Our aim is to generate employment. The portal will list the skilled labour available in each of the nine panchayats. It’s a boon for people who have begun to realise that skilled labourers are hard to come by these days,” he added.
In Azheekode, which has an impressive list of workers listed, any surfer can get the contact information of the person he wants to employ. It has listed 13 agricultural labourers and as many construction labourers at a time when manual labourers are getting pricey and scarce in Kerala.
Akshaya, Kerala’s unique e-literacy programme, got a refreshing boost when Unesco picked it as a partner in rural empowerment in 2006. Unesco selected Kannur district for the pilot phase. At the fag end of the Unesco partnership, Akshaya is waiting for government support to spread the model to all villages and towns across the state.
Akshaya, which made Malappuram the first fully e-literate district in the country, claims to have made at least a person in each family in the district e-literate. The scheme was launched in Malappuram in 2002 and later extended to seven districts. Bridging the digital divide has helped blur the socio-economic barriers too.
s_don@dnaindia.net
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