Kathmandu: Admitting that it will not be able to meet the text book printing target by the start of the new academic session, Janak Sikshya Samagri Kendra (JSSK) has decided to award contracts to print over 2 million books to two other organisations.

While the JSSK has only two months before the academic session begins, around 7 million text books are yet to be printed.

According to JSSK Spokesperson Manohar Lamichhane, Sajha Publications and UCP, an organisation working for the rights of orphans, will be asked to print 2.3 million books.

Though JSSK has been printing the books for the last five months, it has readied only around 13 million books, including last year’s stock, against the target of 19.9 million. Over 1 million books of the primary level were in stock.

Speaking at an interaction organised by the Education Journalist Group on Wednesday, Lamichhane said the Ministry of Education has given a go-ahead to the JSSK to allow the two organisations to print the books.

“We can even turn to Gorkhapatra Sansthan if Sajha and UCP are unable to ready 2.3 million books on time,” he said.

The JSSK, the sole authority that publishes books for the Central, Mid-Western and Far-Western regions, had set a target of printing 21.3 million units this year. However, it revised the target to 19.9 million after the government decided to continue with the old syllabus for grade six. It said the sales go down when old textbooks are used the following year.

“If printing goes in the current pace, the textbook crisis (seen last year) will be seen this year too,” said Suparbhat Bhandari, the chairperson of Nepal Guardian Association, who also represents the central level textbook

monitoring committee. According to sources, the JSSK is also likely to run out of printing paper. Some 26 tons of paper is needed to publish 100,000 units, while it still needs some 1,222 tons to meet the current target. “We are not in a position to buy all the required quantity of paper at one go,” Lamichhane said.

source: The Kathmandu Post, 8 feb 2012