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Textbook Crisis

Intelligence to identify culprits

Staff Correspondent
Intelligence agencies have been asked to identify people who are responsible for creating the artificial crisis of textbooks for secondary level students.
"Stern actions must be taken against those who are trying to create the textbook crisis. We have assigned intel ligence agencies to identify the real culprits,” Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid said after a meeting with the representatives of publishers, distributors and booksellers at the Secretariat yesterday.
He said 24 types of textbooks for secondary level students will be available in the markets on Saturday (Feb 7) to resolve the textbook crisis across the country.
"A total of 76 lakh textbooks from class VI to X will come to the markets on February 7 under the third phase. I hope, the existing textbooks crisis will end very soon,” Nahid said.
He said secondary level students could not get their textbooks in time, as printing of the books was not finished within the time frame.
National Curriculum and Textbooks Board (NCTB) affiliated printing agencies and publishers published 54 types of textbooks for secondary level students last month under first and second phases. But the amount of textbooks was not adequate against the demands, sources said.
Leaders of Bangladesh Publishers and Book Sellers' Association (BPBSA) said they placed a proposal before the minister for allowing them to print the textbooks openly without royalty using newsprintpapers.
“It is difficult to sell the textbooks using white print papers as per ream white print paper is now Tk 1200 in the markets. Earlier, it was possible because NCTB sold per ream white print papers at Tk 606 in subsidy,” a leader of BPBSA toldThe Daily Star.
"How can we sell the textbooks as per the NCTB fixed price using white print papers after buying it Tk 1200 per ream from the markets?" he raised the question.
However, officials at the education ministry and NCTB said a syndicate of publishers and booksellers is behind creating the artificial textbook crisis in the markets.
"The syndicate has created the crisis so that students are bound to buy guidebooks from the markets perceiving the textbook crisis,” a top official at ministry told The Daily Star.
The officers at the ministry also said NCTB monitoring team has failed to keep close watch on the total process, which is another cause for creating the textbook crisis.