March 5, 2003	Wednesday	Muharram 1, 1424

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PESHAWAR, March 4: The local printing industry is in danger of losing the contract of publishing textbooks for Afghan schools worth $12 million, after donor agencies refused to award it alleging that inferior quality material was used by the local printers last year, NGO officials said.

Talking to Dawn, general manager of University of Nebraska at Omaha Education Press, Ahmad Shah Durrani, said that last year the Afghan ministry of education got over 12 million textbooks printed from the local printers.

He claimed that the Pakistani printers used inferior quality material following which the donor agencies, including the USAID, had directed him (Mr Durrani) that for the current academic year textbooks should be printed in Indonesia, South Korea or any other country, but not in Pakistan.

“The paper and printing quality was very poor,” Mr Durrani said, adding that efforts were still being made to persuade the donors to award contract to the Pakistani printers.

Officials of another NGO said that in the first phase the donor agencies would provide $6 million for printing 10 million textbooks on the condition that the University of Nebraska would print teaching material outside Pakistan.

They said that in the second phase some 10 million additional textbooks would be printed. They said that local printers would lose this contract in case donors went ahead with their plan.

The NGO officials said that the USAID and other donor agencies had agreed to provide financial assistance for the free distribution of textbooks and other teaching material for Afghan children.

Last year, the University of Nebraska at Omaha got printed about four million textbooks for Afghan children, both in Pushto and Dari languages from various printers in Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Lahore, and the local printing industry did a roaring business. The books were transported from Peshawar to Afghanistan through the National Logistics Cell.

The university had been providing books to Afghan children since mid-1980s and recently had set up another printing press in Kabul.

The NGO officials said that the Afghan education ministry in collaboration with the University of Nebraska was revising school and college curricula and the new curriculum was likely to be introduced by the end of 2004.

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