Free books distribution to start soon, says official

PESHAWAR: Amid rumours about suspension of the provision of free textbooks to the students of government schools from grade 1 to 12, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Textbook Board has said the distribution of free books would start soon as new books have been published.

A senior official of the KP Textbook Board told The News that there was no truth in the reports that the provision of free books to the students of government schools had been suspended. He said that some 33.6 million books had been published, which would be handed over to the education department for free distribution.

He, however, avoided to comment about any plan of the government to suspend the provision of free books to students. He said the textbook board was like a book shop which published and supplied books to the education department which was supposed to distribute them either free of charge or for payment.

The confusion was created by a recent notification of the coordinator for provision of free textbooks to all the district education officers and heads of educational institutions regarding collection of the old/last year used books for redistribution in continuation with the policy adopted by the former caretaker government.

The caretaker government, in view of the heavy expenses on free textbooks, had devised a policy to make reuse of the old books. The free books cost the provincial exchequer Rs8 billion a year, said an official. The reuse of old/last year books would not only reduce the cost but also avoid wastage of the books. The caretaker government formed a committee for the purpose in October last year, which unveiled the plan in February last.

According to the policy: “100 percent free textbooks will be provided for classes nursery to three, 80 percent for classes four to five, and the remaining 20 percent will be managed from old textbooks. Similarly, 50 percent of textbooks will be published for classes six to 12, with the remaining 50 percent managed from old textbooks.”

In order to execute the plan, the coordinator for free textbooks recently issued a notification urging the district education officers to complete collection of old/last year used textbooks and furnish certificates clearly mentioning the number of collected textbooks by March 30 (today).

The notification stated that Education Monitoring Authority (EMA) would be fully engaged in collection and distribution of old and new textbooks alongwith DEOs, DDEO, SDEOs, ADEOs, School Leaders, Principals, Headmasters, Headmistress and Head teachers (Male and Female) in order to complete the task effectively, accurately and well in time.

He directed the officials that the available old and new textbooks shall be re-distributed among the students on the day one of the commencement of new academic year and every student shall have textbooks and teaching learning activity shall be commenced without any disturbance.

He had said that the matter shall be treated as top priority and delinquent officers/officials shall be treated under E&D rules if any delay or mismanagement and poor performance was reported.

This notification provided a reason to the rumours mongers to launch a propaganda against the government accusing it of suspension of the free textbooks. The textbook board official, however, said that this year the government had given them an order for publishing 40 percent less books than the previous year. He said that last year they had published over 50 million books, which were reduced to 33.6 million this year.