Move to scrap typewriting exam worries students
Hyderabad: State Technical Education Department's proposal to do away with typewriting examinations from the next academic year has stirred up hornets' nest. Expert feel that if the typewriting examinations are abolished, it will hit the poor hard.
Speaking to The Hans India, L Viswanatha Reddy, who teaches at a computer institute in Barkatpura, pointed out that it would hit hard students who came from poor background.
There are a very few computer institutes who would exclusively enrol students for the purpose of typewriting. "The investment being made to run a computer institute cannot be met by offering only typewriting.
This makes the institutes offer courses like Desktop Publishing, accounting packages and few other basic programming languages and website programmes engaging teachers like me," he added.
Expressing similar opinion, Sai Madhav who runs a xerox centre in AS Rao Nagar said, "Earlier, I had either typewriting machines. Five are for English typing and three are for Telugu typing.
But, as the number of people coming for Telugu typing has come down, I had to dispose of my Telugu typing machines. However, still, students come to learn English typing as we charge Rs 200 per month. Depending on the locality the month fee changes a bit.
Also, students learn it on a standard keyboard and enter into the market as data entry operators earning around Rs 12,000 to Rs 16,000 per month. Still, people give preference to those having a certificate in the typewriting examination for the data entry positions, he said.
However, there are some computer institutes located in Ameerpet and few other places in the city impart typing for Kannada, Marathi, besides English and Hindi etc. Because, typewriting institutes mostly focus on English, Telugu, Urdu and Hindi.
However, they charge around Rs 1,100 to Rs 2,000 depending on the language. Even after completion of these courses, the starting salary for them remains similar to that of the data entry operators in the market.