More than half of the free textbooks meant for the students from the pre-primary level to the higher secondary level in the country are yet to be distributed among the students although the education ministry officials promised to distribute all books by today.
In this situation, there is uncertainty among the students about the start of their classes in full swing with all textbooks, with the first month of the year 2025 ending tomorrow.
Till Tuesday, about 16.52 crore or 41.14 per cent out of the total about 40.15 crore free textbooks was distributed among the students, according to National Curriculum and Textbook Board officials.
Out of the total textbooks, 20.58 crore or 51.25 per cent was printed till Tuesday.
Now the board officials are saying that they would be able to distribute all textbooks by February 20.
They blamed crisis of papers, bookbinders and bank loans and a lack of capacities of the printers for the situation.
Earlier on January 1, at the inaugural ceremony of the online version of the textbooks, Secondary and Higher Education Division senior secretary Siddique Zobair said that all textbooks would be sent for distribution among the students across the country by January 30.
Education adviser Wahiduddin Mahmud was present in the programme as the chief guest.
That day the board had sent six crore copies of the textbooks to upazilas for distribution.
At the January 1 programme, NCTB chairman AKM Reazul Hassan said that they would distribute the rest of the primary textbooks by January 5.
Till Tuesday, out of the total 9,19,50,492 primary-level textbooks, 7,61,65,976 copies or 82.83 per cent of textbooks were printed and 6,78,36,426 copies or 73.77 per cent of the textbooks were distributed among the students.
In cases of the secondary-level textbooks, out of the total 30.81 crore books, 12.97 crore copies or 42.09 per cent of textbooks were printed and 9.74 crore copies or 31.61 per cent of the textbooks were distributed among the students.
Reazul told 抖阴精品 on Wednesday that they could not distribute all textbooks due to some challenges.
鈥楾he printers are now facing a crisis of papers to print, bookbinders to bind the books and bank loans to work,鈥� he said, adding that they were helping the printers to get through these challenges.
He mentioned that they had given the printing works to a total of 116 printers who were supposed to print 1.42 crore books a day in combine.
鈥楿nfortunately they are printing only about 40 lakh books a day,鈥� the board chairman said, alleging that some of the printers had lied about their capacity.
Replying to a question, he said that if they would take more time to evaluate the capacities of the each of the printers before providing them with works, then the process of printing books would have been delayed more.
The chairman added that they would distribute all books by February 20.
Some printers earlier blamed the government for its delayed procedures to provide them with the printing works.
After the ouster of Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League regime on August 5, the interim government decided to print the textbooks for this year as per the 2012 curriculum instead of the 2021 curriculum.
Following the government decision, the board cancelled the previous tenders and floated fresh tenders for printing the textbooks after the evaluation of the textbooks as per the national curriculum of 2012.
Some of the printers said that they had got work orders even in December, which were usually completed by August each year.
This year, according to the NCTB, 40.15 crore copies of textbooks 鈥� 62 lakh for pre-primary, 8.55 crore for primary, 30.81 crore for secondary and 1.92 lakh for national minority students 鈥� will be distributed among about four crore pre-primary, primary, secondary, secondary vocational, ibtedayi, dakhil vocational, and visually challenged students.
After printing, the NCTB brought in the textbooks some corrections, including a correction to a textbook that had read the name of a July martyr as Nahiyan instead of Nafisa, the date of the death of July martyr Abu Sayed and the removal of a graffiti containing the word 鈥楢divasi鈥�.
The government has been distributing free textbooks for the students of the pre-primary level to the higher secondary level since 2010.