KARACHI, Feb 24: A meeting between the Sindh education minister and publishers, which was supposed to be held Saturday on the issue of printing of textbooks from abroad, was postponed after the publishers opposed the idea of getting textbooks printed from abroad.

Sources in the education department said that representatives of the Pakistan Publishers and Booksellers’ Association (PPBA) had sought time for a meeting with the Sindh education minister Dr Hameeda Khuhro to discuss the issue. The meeting was postponed at the eleventh hour and the reasons cited were that the minister was engaged in another important matter.

On the other hand, the PPBA in a joint statement by its Central Committee Chairman Aziz Khalid, Sindh Zone’ Chairman Shaikh Arshad Ali, and Convenor of Publishers’ Standing Committee Nadeem Mazhar expressed concern over the Sindh Textbook Board’s concept of procuring paper and getting textbooks printed from a firm in Indonesia.

They demanded of the education minister to initiate an immediate inquiry in the matter as the STB and education department officials who had initiated the idea were bent upon destroying the publishing, book binding, and paper manufacturing industries.

They denied the charges of delayed delivery of textbooks and said they were printed and handed over to the concerned authority in time and the practice would continue in future. They expressed surprise over the rejection of all samples and said this had never happened in the past that all samples of the bidders had failed to meet the required specification.

The PPBA representatives asked the education minister to ask the STB officials as to why they had delayed the process of inviting tenders while in other provinces the process of printing of textbooks was in the final stage.

Extending their support to the education minister, they asked her to ensure the allocation of printing textbooks to different publishers so the publishers could deliver the printed textbooks in time. They claimed sufficient paper was stored in the STB warehouse to publish textbooks from classes I to V.

They said the publishing, printing and binding process was a lengthy process and it would be impossible for the STB officials to monitor all the processes abroad. They said that the delaying tactics to procure paper and get textbooks published by the education department bureaucracy could be a conspiracy to make the education minister cut a sorry figure in the next general election.

They hoped the education minister would take up the issue and assured her of their cooperation in this respect.