Shortage of Tamil scribes to aid the blind

Non-governmental organisations and individual scribe coordinators say that while there is a large group of scribes available for students in the English medium, the numbers are abysmal when it comes to students writing in Tamil. 

From Whatsapp groups to social networking sites, the coordinators take to several channels to reach out to scribes. 

SN Barath, founder, Lit The Light, a voluntary service organisation, supporting visually impaired, says that he is on the lookout for at least 5,000 scribes for across 30 centres. He says, “It is ironic that in Chennai, we have this problem. College students will soon appear for semester exams and we have already begun networking with people for finding scribes. However, we are most likely going to have a dearth of scribes proficient in Tamil.” He says that apart from language issues, the other problem is finding suitable people for the exams scheduled for weekdays. “The common response from most of them we approach is—I know the language, but I have not brushed up my writing skills since school. The others we reach out to, tell us they have prior engagements during the week,” he says. The coordinators have been reaching out to the student community, to rope in more people. “We are approaching colleges to bring in volunteers. Getting repeat scribes is the challenge here,” he adds.

They add that factors like long distance travel, lack of allowance, etc. are some factors that make finding scribes an uphill task. R Venkataraman, an IT employee who has been helping locate scribes, says, “It is difficult for senior citizens to travel long distances for the purpose. Moreover, when we approach students, they need some allowance for the travel. Instead corporates would be able to help us better with volunteers,” he says.

J Leelavathy, who served a scribe a decade ago, and has since then been arranging scribes for exams, says that homemakers can be of great help. “We used to have school students stepping in, but that was not permitted later.”