KARACHI, April 30: A joint body of school heads and teachers on Friday demanded of the government to institute a judicial enquiry into the issue of non-availability of textbooks to 2.8 million students of government primary schools in the province.

Speaking at a press conference at a school, leaders of the Heads and Teachers' Welfare Associations' Alliance criticized the Sindh Textbook Board and Sindh Education department for their failure to supply free textbooks for distribution among government primary school students in time.

They said that the repeated failure and the following silence by the people at the helm of the affairs needed to be probed into by a committee, comprising members of high judiciary.

The STB had also failed to market books in adequate quantity for the students of elementary and secondary schools in due time, while on the other hand certain errors and non-savoury text were included in the books due to negligence of authorities, which needed to be checked, they mentioned.

Chairman and general secretary of the alliance, Abdur Rehman Khan, and Anisur Rahman, said that the announcement about setting up of an enquiry committee about two weeks back, pertaining to the textbooks issue, by the Sindh Education department, was proving an eyewash and nothing else.

They said that the government should move for immediate removal of the sitting STB chairman and appoint some person of integrity in his place, so that award of jobs like supply of printing papers and book printing to dummy organizations or to those having lesser experience could be averted in future.

They observed that it was due to a ploy of "commission mafia" that 98 per cent of the students of primary classes in government sector were without books, despite the fact that their academic session had commenced on April 1.

Though there existed a general insensitivity in government quarters over the non-availability of books, we as teachers consider it as our responsibility to warn the nation of the adverse situation, Anisur Rahman said.

Alliance chairman Abdur Rahman criticized the changes made to the textbooks in the name of curricula revision and demanded of the government to withdraw the same. It was the incompetence of the federal education ministry and its care-takers that wrong ideas, words and language had been included in the books, he alleged.

To a question, he said that if the federal and provincial governments failed to withdraw the controversial changes in the newly-developed books, the alliance, representing 15 teachers' bodies, would hold a convention to review the situation.