The Textbook Monitoring Central Committee (TMCC) today issued a three-day ultimatum to Janak Education Materials Centre (JEMC) asking it to clarify why it failed to publish the targeted textbooks by mid-April.

TMCC has also asked Sajha Prakashan to distribute available textbooks to make them accessible to students.

Suprabhat Bhandari, president, Guardians Association Nepal and a member of TMCC today said JEMC had earlier pledged to provide 24.4 million sets of textbooks for the new academic session. “JEMC had earlier said it had a stock of 14.1 million sets of textbooks and needed to publish only 10 million sets till mid-April but it was yet to publish five million textbooks to meet its target,” he said, adding, “The new academic session began today but students still don’t have books.”

He said it was in this backdrop that the committee today asked JEMC to furnish written clarification within three days and if the clarification was not satisfactory, TMCC could take another bold decision at the next meeting scheduled for Thursday.

According to random monitoring conducted by guardians, Sajha Prakashan had a stock of 17,000 sets of textbooks in Kailali where there were 27,000 students. Out of the total stock, the local agent had only taken 3,000 books from Sajha Prakashan’s collection centres to particular locations. He said, “Despite availability of books, local agents were not taking JEMC books due to the high commission they were getting from private publishers. Hence, it was necessary to take action against them.”

source: the himalayan times, 15 april 2013