The authorities could not as yet reach 13.64 crore textbooks, out of
31.50 crore, to upazilas for free distribution among the pupils of
schools and madrassahs.
National Curriculum and Textbook Board said it was worried that the text
books could be distributed among all the students by January 1, the
first day of the new academic year.
Frequent hartals during the peak distribution time was interrupting the
efforts to reach the books to the destinations, officials said.
Officials said that well ahead of the coming academic year the NCTB had
taken the plan to make sure that the textbooks reached the upazilas by
November 30.
But frequent hartals since October, they said made it difficult for the NCTB to accomplish the task.
Printers said the volatile political atmosphere was disrupting printing and transportation in the last leg of the programme.
They called for keeping textbook transportation out of hartals’ purview.
NCTB distribution controller Mustak Ahmed Bhuiyan said until November 14
printers took 17.86 crore textbooks to the upazilas on trucks.
It is the responsibility of upazila education officers to send the books to the schools for distribution among the students.
Mustak said that for the next year the government had taken the plan to
distribute 1.80 crore pre-primary books, 11. 37 crore primary school
books, 13.77 crore secondary school books and 4.62 crore books for the
students of ibtadayi and dakhil madrassahs.
Until November 14, he said, the printers reached 17.86 crore books to
the upazila education offices, 7. 40 crore for primary schools, 9.35
crore for secondary schools and 1.12 crore for the ibtadayi and dakhil
madrassahs.
Mustak said that the shipment of the pre-primary level textbooks was yet to begin.
He said the NCTB had planned to reach the books to the upazila education offices by November 30.
Hartals are proving a hindrance, he said.
NCTB officials said that on an average about 25 lakh textbooks were shipped to upazilas per day.
Disruptions for two or three days in a row leads to millions of books
remaining stockpiled with the printing houses needing several days to
ship to the destinations.
Since October 25, NCTB got only three working days, October 30,31 and November 3, said officials.
The schoolchildren in the remote areas face the prospects of not getting their books in due time.
Out of 19,070 secondary schools 526 are in the remote hilly areas, 528 in the coastal belt and 714 in the haor belt.
Many of the 89,712 primary schools are also located in remote and inaccessible areas.
Bangladesh Mudron Shilpa Samity senior vice president Tofayel Khan said
the printers were facing problems in bringing paper to the printing
presses, taking the books to the binders and ultimately to the upazila
education offices and the whole exercise cost them lot more than usual.
NCTB secretary Braja Gopal Bhowmik described November as the most important time for the distribution of the textbooks.
Hartals are creating hindrances in reaching the textbooks to the
students before January 1, said Nurul Islam Nahid, who recently resigned
as the education minister.
In 2010, the government began distribution of free textbooks to students of secondary schools.
Free distribution of books among the primary school students began in 1981. (source)