KATHMANDU, July 28: Although about four months have passed since the new academic session, some 10-15 per cent of school students are still partially deprived of textbooks.
Janak Education Material Center (JEMC) is the sole authority to publish textbooks for public schools in the country.
The JEMC was assigned to print a total of 17,753,218 units of textbooks for grade six to grade 10 this year. There are around 6 million students enrolled in public schools across the country.
However, it is reported that around 10-15 per cent of students are partially deprived of one or a few textbooks, said Suprabhat Bhandari, president of the Guardians' Association Nepal.
“We'll look into the matter soon,” said Bhandari, who is also a member of the central monitoring committee formed by the Department of Education. The monitoring committee scrutinizes fees, school conditions, requirements and various school activities.
JEMC officials claimed that they have already published the promised units of school textbooks. “We have already dispatched textbooks to Regional District Offices, distributors and bookshops in different parts of the country,” said Dambar Gurung, a JEMC official. “The private distributors and bookshops may have faced difficulties in distributing the books due to transportation problems in some parts of the nation,” he added.
JEMC officials conceded that they could not publish the economics textbooks for grade IX in time.
“But now there is no crisis of textbooks,” said Gurung.
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