Staff Correspondent

The government plans to start printing textbooks early in 2023 as a delayed tender has made the distribution on New Year’s Day uncertain after the authorities failed to meet the deadline in the past two years.

Instability in the paper market due to the Russia-Ukraine war and power outages have made it all the more uncertain.

The delivery of free textbooks to students of schools and colleges on the first day of the year has become a tradition, known as the Textbook Festival, after the Sheikh Hasina government launched the programme more than a decade ago.

In the past 12 years, the Awami League government distributed more than four billion textbooks among students of primary and secondary levels free of charge. But the coronavirus pandemic disrupted printing at the end of 2020 and distribution on the first day of 2021. The textbooks were distributed in phases at the secondary level.

The delayed tender for printing in 2021 hampered efforts to deliver the books to the students on New Year’s Day of 2022.

Officials at the National Curriculum and Textbook Board said a syndicate of printers raised the costs, forcing the authorities to call the tender again.

The NCTB has delayed the bidding process again this year, leaving little time for the printing presses to finish the work. Now the government is facing questions about whether it would be able to meet the deadline after the work started at the end of October.

The press owners are also demanding a duty waiver on paper after taking work orders at a lower price than the government rate.

The government will have to print about 350 million books annually, including for pre-primary, primary and secondary students.

NCTB Chairman Farhadul Islam hopes that if the process of printing textbooks starts in January, all the “complications” can be avoided in the future.

"We have decided that the Directorate of Primary Education, NCTB, the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education and the Ministry of Education will meet in January to discuss how to complete the tender process.”

Asked about the reason for the delay in publishing this year's tender, Farhadul said, "It took two months just to decide whether the primary school books will be printed outside the country or in the country."

“And taking advantage of these complications, the printing press owners are also asking for some benefits.”

NCTB officials think that the printing companies are taking advantage of hasty work. The cycle of delaying the work must end so that the government's good efforts like the Textbook Festival are not called into question, they said.

In addition to the late delivery of books, there have been allegations of substandard work against the printing presses. Farhadul alleged the printers were holding the government “hostage”, a practice the authorities are trying to end.