KARACHI, Aug 15: Thousands of students will report to schools on the first day of the new academic session, today, but without books as the Sindh Textbook Board has not been able to meet the market requirement.

The academic session will begin in the province with the reopening of all the educational institutions on Wednesday, after two and half months long summer vacations.

According to a survey of major book markets in the city, booksellers were offering all books, other than the STB’s, which are prescribed to class I to X students of the private and government schools.

At a couple of bookshops parents of private school students were told that the STB’s books were not available. Most of the private schools do prescribe Urdu, Islamiat, Social Studies, Sindhi, Mathematics and General Science books to their students, new prints of which were not available.

A bookseller in Urdu bazaar said that stockists and publishers were not in a position to give dates for the new supply of STB books and as such parents were being urged to visit again after sometime. The STB books are a must but the board has failed to come up to the expectations of the school goers once again, the shopkeeper remarked.

A wholesaler said that the problem was repeated as the board did not want to reduce the print orders for the old publishers, who held the market monopoly. A number of titles are missing and that was due to the policy of awarding publication jobs to a limited number of publishers, who are already overworked with their own publications and free distribution of books sponsored by the Sindh government.

A source in the board said that some new publishers were also involved in the textbook printing but the problem was that they did not posses the capacity and expertise required and finally they found solace in handing over the jobs to big and occupied publishers for earning half of the profit promised to them by the STB.

It was learnt that the STB was busy with the printing of books to be distributed free of cost and did not want to disturb its registered publishers, who were doing the job for it. The STB books for market can be expected after three weeks, when the publishers would be freed of the process of printing books for Class VI to X for free distribution, said a market source.

In the meantime, the STB and the Reform Support Unit of the Sindh education department have been able to transport the books of class I to V for government primary schools to education officials at district and taluka levels, but it will take another 7-10 days to handover the books to the real beneficiaries--the students.

In the case of classes VI to X students, it was learnt that the STB had not made the free books available at its warehouses at Jamshoro from where the educational officials of districts would lift for onward passage to taluka officials and heads of schools.

A source in the education department said that despite repeated changes in the deadline, it appeared that the STB would once again fail to meet the deadline of August 21. Consequently, the RSU will have to revise the schedule for distribution of textbooks for class VI to X, the source added.

A source in the STB said that in view of the inclement weather the authorities had suggested the RSU to delay the process for one week or so.

According to the RSU’s latest schedule of distribution, the books in question will be collected from the STB warehouse at Jamshoro and Karachi on different dates up to Sept 15, after which it will be transported to taluka and heads of schools, which will take at least another week.