Five to six houses behind the crisis, plan to print more copies shelved
Siddiqur Rahman Khan
Short supply and higher prices of textbooks continue to hamper secondary education across the country, according to the findings of an official investigation.
Against the backdrop of acute supply shortage, the education ministry on January 11 decided to print 70 lakh more copies of textbooks.
An order in this regard remains still shelved as printers are reluctant to do the job, National Curriculum and Textbook Board officials told New Age.
The government earlier decided that marketing of about 2.62 core copies of secondary textbooks would be completed by January 31 in three phases.
The official investigation report submitted to the education minister, Nurul Islam Nahid, Sunday night also detected that a syndicate of five to six publishing houses were responsible for the supply shortage.
After the minister had given the directive, the investigation team inspected book shops in Dhaka on Saturday and Sunday and found the textbooks were selling for prices higher than what were fixed by the government.
A book shop owner at Nilkhet in Dhaka on Sunday told New Age he needed to sell the textbook for prices higher than what were fixed as wholesalers did not give any commission on the prices. But according to government rules, the wholesalers should sell textbooks to retailers with at least 10 per cent commission.
Rafiqul Islam, father of a Class IX student at Muslim High School in Chittagong, said he could buy only three, out of the total 14, books from the market.
The textbook board chairman, M Masir Uddin, on Sunday said, ‘All concerned have been asked through a public notification on Sunday not to sell textbooks for prices higher than fixed by the government.’
As for unavailability of full sets of textbook for Class VI to IX, he said according to the decision, full sets of textbooks for all the classes will be available after January 31.
In favour of such a decision, the board chairman said most guardians were reluctant to buy the full set of textbooks in January. A significant number of students use recycled books to save on expenditure. ‘The publishers also do not want to keep books piled up as it is a matter of huge investment,’ he said.
Mostafa Akhteruzzaman, headmaster of the BK Union Institution in Khulna, said textbooks were in short supply although classes had started. Students are using recycled textbooks, he said.
‘My son was disappointed as I could not collect all the books for him even 19 days inside the academic year,’ said a guardian in Rajshahi.
Students of different high schools in Chittagong on Thursday brought out a procession from New Market in protest against the crisis of textbooks.
The Chittagong Merchants’ Association’s additional general secretary, Lutfur Rahman, said publishers had created an artificial crisis in syndication for windfall profit.
There are nearly one crore students in 18,500 secondary schools and about 6,685 dakhil madrassahs, according to government statistics.
The education minister said stern action would be taken against the people who are responsible for the artificial crisis.
Courtesy: newagebd.com
