KARACHI, April 19: The first consignment of books supplied by the Sindh Textbook Board proved inadequate to meet the needs of students of private schools as well as those in government middle schools in the city.

A survey of book-shops in the Urdu Bazar on Monday revealed that the number of STB titles was increasing in the market, but at the same time the earlier released titles, including those of Urdu, Mathematics, Sindhi, English, Islamiat and Social Studies had gone out of stock.

According to the STB sources, as many as 104 major books of Urdu, Sindhi and English have been released in the market till April 16, and the prescribed books are available for the students, who have been visiting the market since the commencement of fresh academic session on April 1.

The STB had failed to provide about 2.8 million sets of books for the students of Class I to V, which was attributed to poor planning and ill-advised act of importing the printing paper from abroad.

However, the board kept on supplying small quantity of books for the students of private schools (class I to X) and those of government schools (classes VI to X), mainly to avert severe criticism, but a complete range of the books was still not available, a market source said.

In addition to supplying books for about 3.7 million government school students, the STB has to cater to the needs of private school students as well in regard to some subjects.

It was learnt that the STB-listed publishers, under an ad hoc strategy evolved by the board, supplied only a part of the total print order. To overcome the crisis, the STB had ordered printing and release of only about 30 to 45 per cent of the required books, which were finally supplied through out the province.

However, the STB publishers, who also develop their own high-price books, prescribed largely by the managements of private schools, preferred to release the board's books in parts, a bookseller alleged, adding that the practice had surely dented the STB, which had already adopted an "eye-wash" policy.

The booksellers claimed that a few of the publishers and wholesalers were causing artificial crisis of STB books, as they wanted to float private publishers' books or pave the way for those books developed under foreign franchise and sold at exorbitant prices.

According to a bookseller, 50 to 55 titles have been released during the months by the STB, out of which 15 are not available in the market and as such there was a need to release the remaining quantity of books on emergency basis.

The situation was similar in the other cities of the province, they said, adding that the outstation students were faced with even a harder situation and it was likely that they would be able to get their books only by the end of May.

The titles, reportedly, missing from the market are: Math-Classes VII, VII and X; Sindhi-Classes IV, VI; Urdu-Classes V, VI, VII, VIII; English-Class IX, Biology (Urdu)-Class IX, Islamiat-Class IV, V, VII. A couple of Social Studies titles have already been stopped for want of correction.

Talking about the much awaited primary school textbooks, the market sources said that the publishers would take one week from the date of supply of paper to go in printing of free books.

Even if we worked on emergency basis, the whole process would take a considerable time, calculated a veteran publisher, saying that free textbooks could be made available only by the end of May, provided the paper was released within a couple of days.