LAHORE – The private publishers have increased the prices of outsourced textbooks from 57 to 257 percent, Pakistan Today has learnt. The increase in prices serves as a reminder to the government to take notice of corruption of private mafia and faultiness in Textbook and Learning Material Policy (TLMP) that is barring education for the poor.
PARENTS, TEACHERS CONDEMN: Parents and students condemned the authorities; the Punjab government and the Punjab Textbook Board (PTB), for the increase in prices. The private publishers have increased the prices of Urdu Qaida 1, Urdu Book 1, Mathematics (Urdu Medium) 1, Mathematics (English Medium) 1, Science/General Knowledge 1 and English Book 1.
Parveen, a mother of three claimed that the books’ expenditure was more than school fee and unfortunately there was no check on private publishers. She said parents were being forced to buy second hand books, which created inferiority complex among the students. She said the slogan of free education has been destructed by the Punjab government itself.
A school teacher said that observing children without books has become a common practice in schools, and when they asked the parents about it they said that their pockets could not bear the burden of such expensive books FORMAT CHANGE RESULTED IN PRICE INCREASE: Although the prices are determined according to the PTB-agreed formula with the private publishers but owing to the increase in volume, size and injudicious use of space in books’ format, the prices were increased. Due to this increase, government had to pay Rs 7.075 million as licence fee as an extra cost for class 1 textbooks only.
TLMP was implemented in PTB in the academic session 2010-11 and to assess the implementation, a series of meetings was held with the stakeholders including the academic staff of PTB, wholesale agents, representatives of trade organisations and others, and increase in prices was decided. CORRUPTION: Stakeholders were already protesting out of fear of increase in prices and in this connection, they had already wrote to the anti-corruption establishments about the officials of PTB and private publishers and had briefed about the corruption.
A case in anti-corruption establishment is still being investigated about the financial embezzlements of a government official. The vested interests became active after the implementation of TLMP and at present five petitions are pending with the Lahore High Court. According to PTB officials, the implementation strategy of TLMP envisages gradual horizontal and vertical introduction of textbooks prepared under Curricula 2006. Due to the litigation and other pressures, this process has been hampered and systematic learning process of students from one grade to another has been interrupted.
A PTB official said that private publishers were supposed to get PTB’s permission about the print run of their respective textbooks. He said that the print run they informed was low in comparison with the previous year’s allocations, whereas the print run should have gone up by 30 to 40 percent because these were newly introduced books and old books had not been recycled.
