As the country reels under an acute shortage of textbooks, it has come to light that over one million textbooks meant for free distribution to students in community schools have gone missing.

A six-member monitoring team led by the under-secretary at the Department of Education (DoE), Rakesh Shrestha, on Sunday found that 1,005,093 units of the books are nowhere in the government’s records. The team checked records of two government entities responsible for textbook publishing and distribution—Janak Sikshya Samagri Kendra (JSSK) and Sajha Publication.

The JSSK, the government monopoly to publish textbooks for the

Central, Mid West and Far West Regions, claims that it handed over 13.1 million units to Sajha Publication for

distribution. However records at the Sajha, which distributes the books, show that it has received just 12.1 million units so far.

According to a member of the monitoring committee, Suprabhat Bhandari, the JSSK records show that it had readied 13.71 million units by Sunday and sold 600,000 units of it from its central office. It handed over the remaining 13.1 units to Sajha.

“The contradiction in the figures indicates irregularity,” Bhandari claimed. “Investigations are on and we will try to bring out the truth soon.”

The government has allocated Rs 1.61 billion for free distribution of books to 6.53 million school children studying in around 32,000 public schools across the country. The estimated cost of the one million books is over Rs 20 million.

In 2011, a probe committee led by former Secretary Jayaram Giri had found that over Rs 700 million allocated for textbook distribution was ‘misused.’

The monitoring team has also found that the penetration of the private sector into the textbook business has lowered the sales of the JSSK. Though the projected demand was 22.4 million this year, the sale is not likely to exceed 17 million.

Despite the laws saying that private publications can sell their books only in the Eastern and Western Development Regions, many publishers mainly, Sudeep and Makalu Publications,are found selling their books in other regions as well. The monitoring team is set to inspect the private publications on Monday.

source: the kathmandu post,27 may 2013