KARACHI, July 26: A special meeting of the board of governors of the Sindh Textbook Board has been convened on July 30 to take up the matter pertaining to non-availability of Class XI and XII books.

Calling from Hyderabad on Friday night, the acting chairman of the Board, Dr Mehboob Ali Shaikh, told Dawn that the board was expediting the process of printing textbooks for colleges and it is likely that the matter pertaining to allocation of books to publishers would be finalized within three days.

He said recommendations with regard to job allocations and other related matters would be placed before the BOG.

He informed that board understood that any further delay in the printing of books would directly affect the students, and that was why it had also dropped the idea of introducing new books of science group in the new session, which was likely to commence from Sept 1.

“We have sent manuscripts to the curriculum wing of the federal education ministry for an approval, but we do not know when those would be returned to us for publication and marketing”, he added, mentioning that a further wait for Islamabad’s approval to the manuscripts would not serve STBB purposes.

He said there was no change in textbooks for this year and publishers would be allocated the old books for printing.

He hoped that publishers would continue to extend their support to the STBB like past and books for college students would be ready for marketing within two weeks, after the allocation of job.

He maintained that textbooks in complete range for all faculties would be available to students in the mid of August. However, he agreed that students of Class XII, who were likely to start taking classes in the first week of August, would be affected to some extent due to late supply of books.

Sources in the education department said the authorities have taken notice of the report about non-availability of text-books for college students and directed the chairman of the STBB to take up the matter on priority so that books could be made available at the earliest.