Staff Correspondent
Severe text book crisis has been created due to unpl-anned and insufficient book supply by the government to the markets as well as syndicate created by the members of allottees for printing text books with a motive to earn quick money.
Book publishers, printing owners and wholesalers alleged that the government has set the number of secondary level text books for printing without conducting any survey to fix the exact number of books needed for the students this year and the members of allottees approved by the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) for printing and publishing text books have made syndication and pilled up the books with a motive to earn huge amount of money as a result the text book crisis in the market has been created.
They said the government gave allotment to the 291 publishers for printing aro-und 2,62,24,07 copies of books this year and in the mean time, around 2,42,00, 000 books have been published and already sold. If the rest of the books are published within a very short time and come to the market still these will not be sufficient to remove the crisis from the market as the required number of books for the students is actually higher than the number of books which has been published this year.
They said the another reason for text book crisis is that the government gave the text book tasks to the publishers in December which was very late and time was not sufficient to publish the books.
Talking to this correspondent, Abu Taher, President of Book Publication Samity, said that if the government is cordially interested to resolve this problem, the text book work has to be opened for all publishers in order to avert syndicate problems. “The persons who are actually responsible for the present crisis should be found and punished to prevent such problem in future,” he said, adding that June or July should be set by the government for text book work.
Proprietor of Azizia Proka-shani said that the NCTB has allotted fifty per cent of total work to Hasan Book Dipu with partiality. “Such activities have created the debacle in the book market and pushed a good number of students into uncertainty,” he said, adding that around 2500-3000 publishers are in the country but the caretaker government distributed the text book tasks among only 291 institutions. For that, the book market has been controlled as per their wills.
During a visit to Bangla Bazar and Nilkhet market, this correspondent found that students and guardians are gathering in the markets to buy books and they are not getting enough books. “The salesmen demand two times the actual price of a book without showing the books to the customers,” Yeasin, a student of Uttara High School, told the reporter at Nilkhet.
It may be mentioned that the government approved the allotment for publishing around 4,00,00,000 copies of books based on changing syllabus in 1996 and has approved only 2,62,00,000 copies this year.
Courtesy: thebangladeshtoday.com
