E-Keralam aims to arm students against online fraud

It was only recently that Kamalam K fell victim to online fraud. The 47-year-old housewife from Kannur regretfully recalls giving away key details of her debit card and OTP to a fake phone banker and ending up losing about Rs 50,000. Kamalam now knows that it was a costly mistake revealing banking details to a stranger and rues her lack of basic phone banking awareness that could have saved her hard-earned money from the hoax caller.

Now that she has lost her money, Kamalam was adamant she would not repeat the mistake and wants her children and friends to be armed against such fraud by learning the basics. Fortunately for Kamalam, the Kerala Government has launched e-Keralam project, literacy classes on online banking, digital marketing, cybersecurity and online education for school children.

At the school level, training the students will be e-literacy experts who will be meeting them in online and real classroom sessions. The state has launched the project as part of the second 100-day programme of the government on an Assembly constituency basis. Kamalam will be happy that it is the Mattannur constituency of Kannur district where the government is implementing the scheme first. Besides acquiring knowledge about the modern tools of digital marketing and cybersecurity, e-Keralam is expected to guard thousands of people, especially students, against all sorts of online fraud.

About 70,000 people will be the initial beneficiaries of the E-Keralam scheme in Mattannur Assembly segment, which has a population of 2.5 lakh people, eight panchayats and one municipality. The government wants other constituencies in Kerala to follow suit. Kerala State Rutronix, a PSU under the industries department that is spearheading the project, will look forward to imparting education to about 1 crore beneficiaries in the e-Keralam project.

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