GUJRAT: The district education authorities are finding it hard to get printed the the question papers for Class-V and VIII examinations locally as per the requirement of the Punjab Education Commission (PEC).

According to sources, the department’s advertisements in local as well as national newspapers inviting bids for printing the question papers failed to attract local contractors who have no previous experience of this kind. The last date for filing the bids was Jan 23.

A senior official in the district told Dawn it had become a major headache for the department to convince local printers to appear before the purchase committee being headed by the district coordination officer (DCO).

He said besides lacking experience of handling such a huge order (200,000 question papers per subject), most of the local printers did not have National Tax Number as they were not registered for the General Sales Tax, which was a prerequisite for participating in the bid for the contract.

This is for the first time that the provincial government has asked the district education department to make local arrangements for printing the question papers as earlier the job was done under the PEC.

As per the new policy, the PEC would send question sheet through internet to the successful bidder (printer) just 40 hours before the scheduled date of the paper. The printer will have to supply the papers to the examination centers with fool-proof confidentiality, an official said.

He said the education department in Gujranwala had already shown its inability to make the printing arrangements locally.

However, the Gujrat DCO had been pressing the education officials to locally arrange the printing and a ruling party lawmaker had reportedly offered help to the district government through arranging a local printer for the purpose, the sources said, adding that no progress had so far been made in this respect.

Published in Dawn January 27th, 2015

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