PESHAWAR, June 5: The NWFP Textbook Board Publishers and Printers Council on Thursday rejected a proposal of the board asking the local  printers to form public or private limited companies for getting contracts for the next academic year.

Speaking at a press conference at Peshawar Press Club, a member of the council, Shakeel Qureshi, accused the board’s authorities of creating  an environment to discourage the local publishers and printers and pave way for the multinational companies to capture the printing market.

He said the local printers had been producing quality books on low rates  for the last many years.

He said the rules for printing of textbooks in other provinces were different from those in the NWFP.

He said the proposal floated by the board asking the printers to form public or private limited companies was meant to discourage them as every printer and publisher would have to invest Rs200 million to Rs500 million and they did not have that much amount.

The board wanted to give contract only to four or five big private limited companies to deprive the small printers and publishers, who had been printing books on cheaper rates since long, he maintained.

The authorities wanted to give the contracts to the multinational  companies, he alleged.

He said that after giving the printing contract to those companies,  the rates of textbooks would be increased by 600 per cent, which would burden the poor families.

Mr Qureshi said the council had in its meeting vowed to foil the designs of the board.

He appealed to NWFP Governor Iftikhar Hussain Shah, Chief Minister Akram Durrani and the provincial education minister to stop the NWFP  Textbook Board from implementing the proposal.