PESHAWAR, April 22: Shortage of textbooks for middle and secondary classes has delayed the academic session in the NWFP and tribal areas, academicians complained.
They said classes should have commenced in the middle and secondary schools in the first week of April but those could not start due to shortage of textbooks, particularly for the secondary level.
"The crisis has delayed the classes for four weeks. It seems that there will be no activities in secondary schools till next month," a school principal said. The crisis surfaced at a time when the provincial government had planned to distribute textbooks free of cost among 2.2 million primary schoolchildren to enhance the enrolment rate in the province.
Students in Sindh are also facing a shortage of textbooks. Parents and students visit book shops but return empty handed owing to non-availability of textbooks, teachers said and added that a majority of schools had yet to kick off secondary classes.
NWFP Textbook Board Chairman Attaullah Khan, when contacted, said the problem would be resolved by the end of the month. "There is a shortage of books, but it is not as severe as in Sindh," he claimed.
He said that first consignment of secondary school textbooks had been sent to the dealers and more books were being printed. He said free distribution of textbooks in government primary schools was the main cause of the shortage and the board had to publish more than 15 million books for primary classes in a short time.
He said about 2,000 tons of paper had been delivered to the printers for producing primary school books. He said the free distribution of books had raised the demand in the province by 10 per cent.
Textbook Board officials said the local printers did not have the capacity to produce such a large quantity of textbooks in time. An official said that the board had engaged the National Book Foundation and awarded contract to some printers in Punjab to overcome the shortage of textbooks.
The NWFP governor had decided that printing contract should be awarded to local printers to boost the sector.
Our Swabi correspondent adds: The non-availability of textbooks of some middle and high school classes and inadequate distribution of books in the government primary schools has badly affected the studies of the students in the beginning of the academic year.
A number of teachers complained that they were facing difficulties as the admission process of the students had been completed but books to start the teaching were not available.
