Students still facing textbook shortage

 By A Staff Reporter  Kathmandu, July 13: Against the claim of the Janak Education Materials Centre (JEMC) that it has completed the printing of textbooks for the new academic session, the Centre for Education and Human Resource Development (CEHRD) has stated that there was still a shortage of about 3,000,000 textbooks across the country.

The CEHRD is a key department to implement the decisions of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.  

Chudamani Poudel, Director General of the CEHRD, Tuesday said that many students are facing shortage of textbooks even two months after the academic session began. He said the centre submitted details of required textbooks with the beginning of last academic session. Poudel also said that the CEHRD never prints the textbooks but gives the record of estimated textbooks.

Dilliram Luitel, Deputy General Director of the centre and coordinator of the textbooks printing monitoring committee, said it would take more time to print required textbooks. He stressed the need for investigating and punishing the JEMC as it has not shown seriousness to print textbooks in time year after year.

  Talking to The Rising Nepal this Sunday, JEMC spokesperson Chirtra Acharya had however said it had printed 18,000,000 textbooks for this academic session.

Acharya said the JEMC used to print 10 per cent more textbooks than the textbooks sold in the previous academic session.  He said the JEMC sold 16,600,000 textbooks last year and it printed 18,000,000 textbook this year.

Though the JEMC has stated that it has completed the printing of required textbooks, schools from across the country are still complaining that they have been unable to find textbooks.

Mainly, students of grade four and grade seven of the community schools have complained that they do not have essential books until now. There are problems even for other grades.

Regarding the shortage of the textbooks in schools, Chitra Acharya, spokesperson of the JEMC, had said that the JEMC was surprised haring about  the shortage of textbooks though it printed 10 per cent more textbooks than the number of textbooks sold last years.

Acharya further said there was demand for Nepali, English and Hamro Serofero. It may be because many private schools have also used the textbooks of JEMC mandatorily from this year. He also stated that less textbooks may have been sold last year because of COVID-19. Due to that, the centre has been printing more textbooks on the basis of demand this year, Acharya said. 

The JEMC has been asking with schools to report the shortage of required textbooks through regional offices of the centre. But, they tend to report to the media about textbook shortage rather than demanding them with the centre. 

Meanwhile, the centre has also been discussing ways not to repeat such problems of textbooks shortage from the next academic session. Currently, the textbooks of grade one to three are being printed by private printing presses. The government has also been discussing an option to print grade one to grade five textbooks from private publications, DG Poudel said.