PESHAWAR, April 21: NWFP Education Minister Maulana Fazli Ali Haqqani on Thursday raided a number of bookshops, book agencies and printing presses and arrested a bookseller for selling textbooks which had been given by the provincial government for free distribution among students.

“We have received complaints from people that some bookshops are selling textbooks that were supposed to be given free and arrested a bookseller selling such books,” Maulana Haqqani told journalists here.

Answering a question, he said that the government was not bound to hand over control of educational institutions to the Aga Khan University Education Board (AKU-EB) as not only the NWFP but other provinces too had reservations on this issue.

“It is better to strengthen our educational boards instead of giving control of educational institutions to the AKU-EB,” the minister said.

He said they were not against the AKU-EB but the agenda behind this move through which the country was being made a secular state.

Coming back to the issue of books distribution free of cost, the education minister said that these books carried stickers with the wordings ‘Not for sale’ for information of everyone and yet some shopkeepers violated the instructions by selling them.

He said that the bookseller they had arrested told them that he had purchased different books from four book agencies and could not pinpoint the one which had sold him the books in question.

An FIR would be registered against the bookseller and further investigation would be done to find the real culprit, he said.

Maulana Haqqani said he would spare no one found involved in this fraud.

The education minister said that the basic objective of the MMA government for distributing books for free was to give relief to the people and to help increase the literacy rate, a gesture that was not only followed by others but was appreciated by the world community as well.

“Books worth Rs250 million were distributed among primary schoolchildren last year which increased enrolment at primary level by 500,000 students,” he said.

Maulana Fazli Ali Haqqani said that allocation for education sector in the current budget had been increased.

The education minister said the government had decided that it would distribute books free of cost among girl students at matric level.

This would cost the government about Rs350 million, he said.

Maulana Haqqani said the government had completed the process of distribution of books in all areas except Chitral.

“Communication problems have delayed distribution of books in Chitral. Now we are planning to ferry books through a C-130 plane,” the education minister said.

He said there were 24,000 schools in the province, and the government had set a system in place to supply free books to all students without any delay.

Maulana Haqqani said the government had even raided schools to confirm that students had received books.

The education minister asked parents of students studying in government schools to obtain books from schools’ headmasters.

He advised those headmasters who had not received the required number of books to contact executive district officers to provide them with the same.—PPI