Jamshedpur, May 4: The Naveen Patnaik government of Orissa has come to the rescue of the Arjun Munda government to overcome a serious problem in the educational front.

The Patnaik government has agreed to translate Hindi textbooks to Oriya to help students of government schools here to pursue their studies in Oriya .

The Munda government would print the books in Oriya once the translated scripts were handed over by the Orissa government.“We had approached the Orissa government to help us translate Hindi textbooks into Oriya. We would be getting the translated scripts within the next couple of months,” human resources development (HRD) minister, Pashupati Nath Singh told The Telegraph. According to Singh, the Orissa government would provide the translated scripts for Class one to five. “After this we would be giving them books of higher classes for translation,” Singh added.

For the past few years, studies in Oriya and Bengali medium schools have been suffering immensely following the lack of textbooks for students in these two languages. As the government failed to provide textbooks to students in the two languages, the teachers found it difficult to teach the students. Several Oriya and Bengali outfits in the state had requested the government to take concrete steps in this regard.

HRD sources said: “After Singh took over as the new HRD minister, he convened a meeting with the officials of the department concerned and discussed the issue. A decision was taken that the government should seek the help of the Orissa government to translate the textbooks in Oriya.” They added that the Naveen Patnaik government “willingly” agreed to help the cause of the Oriya students of the state.