PESHAWAR: The elementary and secondary education department is facing a 30 per cent shortage of the textbooks of different subjects.

The department has already begun delivering textbooks to the government schools for distribution to students free of charge, but it has failed to make available all books to the schools in time.

Sources told Dawn that the distribution of short books would double the human efforts needed for distribution at different levels as another exercise would be required once the short books were provided to the education department.

“Up to intermediate level, every class is facing the shortage of textbooks of three to four subjects,” a relevant official of the education department told Dawn.

Officials blame it on lockdown, delayed data provision to book board

He said 10 books of Pashto, Urdu, English and Social Studies of different classes were in short supply at primary level and 24 of Mutalae Quran, Urdu, History, General Science, Islamiat, Computer Science, Physics, Chemistry and Pakistan Studies at secondary level.

The official said as the Grade 11 course had undergone changes for the new academic year, the books of English, Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, History of Modern World and Fine Arts were in short supply.

He also revealed the shortage of three books for 12th graders, including English, Chemistry and Pakistan Studies.

On Friday, elementary and secondary education minister Akbar Ayub Khan directed the department to deliver books to the promoted students at home.

He ordered the assigning of home tasks to the students during the closure of schools.

When contacted, head of the Paper Sale and Procurement Branch of the KP Textbook Board Ziaul Hasnain, who oversees the process of book publication, declined to comment on the matter, while board chairman Asmatullah Gandapur was not available for comments.

Officials of the board cited different reasons for book shortage, especially the prolonged Corona-19-induced lockdown.

Officials told Dawn on condition of anonymity that the printing and publishing industry, which had taken the contract of publishing books for the province’s schools, had stopped working for the last one month.

They said publishers in Punjab struggled to transport published books due to the lockdown.

The officials held the elementary and secondary education department provided the required data late to the textbook board.

They said the education department collected the books’ data from its district offices across the province and provided it to the textbook board for the books’ publication.

The officials said usually, the education department provided data to the board in August but that time around, it provided the same in early Nov due to which the process for awarding contracts to publishers got under way late.

They said publishers and printers were unable to provide the required books to the textbook board on time due to paper shortage on the market.

The officials said some books went to the re-tendering process, which also took additional time and later on caused a delay in the publishing.

Asked why the publication of some books were re-tendered, the officials said under the rules, a publisher could publish only three books, so the publishers, who had got the contract of more than three books, was cancelled and later on re-tendered taking additional time.

However, a senior official in the elementary and secondary education department said the books’ data was provided a month late but it couldn’t be a justification for the delay in books publication.

“The textbook board is responsible for making arrangements, including for data collection from the education department, I wonder if it received the book data late, why the rest of the arrangements weren’t made on time,” he said.

Published in Dawn, April 17th, 2020