Karachi: The Sindh Textbook Board has canceled the deadline for printing textbooks in the new academic session 2024, due to which textbooks will not be available in the province next year as well.
Due to the inexperience of the caretaker provincial government in Sindh and the remnants of the previous government, textbooks will not be available in time for the new academic session 2024, which will begin in the next few months, for government schools and the market.
There has been a strong possibility that like the current academic session 2023, the students of the province will go to school without books next year as well because the Sindh Textbook Board has canceled the tender for printing textbooks in the new academic session 2024. The tender was scheduled to be issued on December 12 and was suddenly canceled a day earlier.
It is to be noted that according to the decision of the Steering Committee of the School Education Department, the academic session is to start from April 15 this time in Sindh, while the academic session in Sindh was starting from August 1 after the covid-19, which has been changed after at least 4 years. There were already challenges in printing and timely delivery of textbooks.
It is worth mentioning that the previous provincial government of Sindh could not provide the required number of textbooks to government schools in the current session due to its incompetence.
According to a cautious estimate, government schools were facing a shortage of at least 20 lakh textbooks, due to which students were spending time in schools without books, after which an order was issued once again during the Congress government to print these books and the caretaker chief minister until last November. Sindh students themselves continued to distribute cookbooks.
Students in government schools were forced to read books with sharing, but they did not have books at home, now there are four months left for the start of the new academic session 2024 in Sindh and the books have not reached the print warehouses from where the relevant districts are. will be issued to the schools.
45 lakh students of government schools are to be distributed free of cost, besides lakhs of books in the market, which are impossible to publish in this short period of time after the sudden cancellation of the tender.
On the other hand, as soon as the tender was cancelled, Agha Sahil Pathan, the officer working as the chairman of Sindh Textbook Board and Nusrat Parveen, the officer appointed as the secretary, were removed by the Sindh government and an associate professor of the college cadre was appointed as the secretary.
A formal departmental investigation is already being conducted on the said associate professor due to irregularities in the board because Associate Professor Hafizullah Meher has been posted as secretary in the Barsand Textbook Board for many years.
The action of the caretaker provincial government has become suspicious by removing the former secretary and giving the post of secretary to the former secretary. implemented the decisions of the meeting held in February 2023 and did not send the minutes of the meeting to the members.
Moreover, the subject specialists appointed by the board were not given appointments and their future was played with. The said officer was even given a personal hearing in June at the Chief Secretary’s office. victimized
On the other hand, when “Express” contacted Hafeez Meher, Tuan said that the matter of his appointment has been challenged in the court, so at present he has not been able to start working in this position.
Regarding the delay in the publication and distribution of books, he said that when they start the work and the government says, they will deliver the books on time.
He also said that even if the books do not arrive by April 15, there will not be much delay. He said that according to the Tendrab rules, it can be done in January itself.
It should be noted that the tender issued for the printing of textbooks on December 12 was finally cancelled, this matter remains a mystery and no one is ready to answer this question.
It is believed that during the caretaker provincial government, there was pressure from the remnants of the previous government to hand over a large part of the tender to certain publishers in Hyderabad.
When “Express” contacted the outgoing secretary of Sindh Textbook Board, Nusrat Parveen in this regard and asked why the tender was canceled when the academic session was supposed to start in April, Tuan said that the orders to cancel the tender came from the Secretary Schools and there were some problems.
In this regard, several attempts were made to contact the Secretary School Education Shireen Narejo, but she was reluctant to contact.
In addition, when the Caretaker Chief Minister Sindh Justice (R) Maqbool Baqir was asked by “Express” during a function, why changes have been made in the Sindh Textbook Board at a time when the text book is to be published immediately, to which he said that it is Efforts have been made to improve.
On the other hand, when “Express” questioned the Caretaker Chief Minister of Sindh that why the tender was canceled and how the books will be delivered in the new academic year, he revealed that the Sindh government is now thinking that no publication of textbooks will be given to any publisher. Our Industries Department has big and market-ready machines, so now the textbooks should be printed from the Industries Department, the books will be printed from there soon.
It should be noted that the budget for printing textbooks in Sindh is very less compared to the other two provinces Punjab and KP. The budget for printing textbooks in Punjab is Rs. Which is also confirmed by Sindh Textbook Board officers.
On the other hand, caretaker provincial education minister Rana Hussain recently presented the idea of a book bank of books in schools on the occasion of a visit to the Sindh Textbook Board. According to the official press release, this will save the government a lot of money. At the school level, students are younger and do not use books in such a way that future students can use them again.
Many years ago, this scheme was introduced at the college education level, which failed miserably, and later the book bank and free distribution of books from the colleges was discontinued.
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