Textbook crisis
Photo: Kalim Shantu / Driknews
I can still vividly recall the day when I enrolled myself in class VI after finishing my primary education. I dreamt about new school, new environment and new textbooks. I eagerly waited to buy new textbooks as soon as possible. A certain curiosity to see what new contents, pictures and graphs were in the new textbooks was one of the main reasons to buy them quickly. I could not even sleep on the day before buying new textbooks. What I am saying till now is nothing but the true feeling of a school boy/ girl like me. Nobody has the right to hoodwink the school kids by creating an artificial crisis of textbooks. But regrettably we have been witnessing the same crime being perpetrated in this country for a long time. We often see textbook crisis at the very beginning of the academic session. It is created by a section of corrupt publishers in collusion with some dishonest government officials with a view to earning a windfall profit by selling guidebooks. The reason behind this crisis is that the government awarded tenders for publishing textbooks to the top guidebooks producers. The NCTB divided its distribution of the textbooks into three phases according to the importance of the books the 14 most important ones are in the first phase, 38 in the second phase, and in the 3rd phase there are 24 textbooks. Although the deadlines for releasing books of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd phases has already elapsed, there is still scarcity of the books. For this reason the education ministry formed a taskforce comprising personnel of Rab and NCTB to solve the crisis by February 5. The taskforce gave the ultimatum to publishers to release textbooks. But they failed to comply with its directive on the lame excuse that binding cost had increased but the government did not increase it, so they could not find workers to bind it on time. It has been proved that it is an artificial crisis of textbooks created by some unscrupulous publishers in collusion with some dishonest government officials when a huge number of books were seized by Rab from Bangla Bazar. According to Notebook Prohibition Act-1980, "No note books or such type of books of up to class vii can be printed and marketed. Besides, no textbook of above class viii can be printed and marketed without permission of the NCTB." But it is a matter of great regret that it is only in paper. The law is not properly enforced. So my appeal to the government is: take punitive action against those unscrupulous publishers and dishonest government officials to stop this practice.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments