200 teams formed for curbing syndicated offenders
Staff Correspondent
Secondary level students across the country are hard hit as they are not getting text books at the outset of the academic year due to an artificial crisis created by syndicates of textbook publishers and sellers.
Expressing grave concern, guardians, teachers and students said “We all request the authority concerned to take punitive measures against those engaged in creating this artificial text book crisis and call upon the government to ensure the availability of text books in the market without any delay,” they said.
Although the academic year of secondary level has already begun in schools as per board instruction but the students are not getting text book to commence their study. “We are facing a serious problem in getting text book for our children as sufficient number of books are not available in the market. Besides, some available books are being sold at high rate.” Abdul Jalil, a guardian of high school student, told this correspondent at Nilkhet book market.
Talking to this correspondent, retailers of text book in Nilkhet book market said that they have nothing to do regarding text book crisis as it has been created by syndicates of publishers and wholesalers in a planned way to earn extract profit.
“As retailers we have to buy books at high rate from the wholesalers. There is no alternative to selling books at high rate in such a situation where the wholesalers have even stopped giving us discount or commission,” retailers said.
National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) Chairman Professor Moshiruddin, admitting that the text book crisis was due to syndication, told this correspondent that the NCTB has already formed 20 teams to monitor the market and find out the offenders.
“Those who are responsible for this artificial crisis will be punished as per legal procedure. In this regard, we requested the government to take legal action against masterminds of creating text book crisis,” Moshiruddin said.
On the other hand, a monitoring committee has been formed with an Additional Secretary of Education Ministry as convener to resolve the issue and take action accordingly.
Responding to a query whether NCTB itself has created this crisis by entrusting limited number of publishers with the task of printing text books, he said “We distributed the text book printing works among 291 institutions through lottery system. So, there is no scope for irregularity in awarding the work of text book print.”
Courtesy: thebangladeshtoday.com
