LAHORE, Jan 3: The Punjab school education department says the Programme Monitoring Implementation Unit (PMIU) has been allocated a substantial amount and paying the outstanding bills to the Punjab Textbook Board (PTB).

In a statement issued in response to a news story headlined “PTB on verge of administrative and financial collapse”, a school education department spokesman said the department was continuously doing monitoring and the PTB would be paid outstanding dues after the Punjab accountant general passed the bills.

It may be mentioned that the PTB has gone tight financially and the PMIU delayed payment of Rs988 million against free supply of textbooks from 2007 to 2012.

The department says a regulatory mechanism has been provided in the Punjab Curriculum Authority Act 2012 and PTB has a pricing mechanism for textbooks, which are being supplied to public schools and the open market. Therefore, it said, the issue of price escalation of books published by private publishers would not arise.

The department spokesman has endorsed the news item stating that the PTB, before notification of the National Textbook and Learning Materials Policy and Plan of Action in 2007, was producing and publishing its own textbooks for classes I-XII under the West Pakistan Textbook Ordinance 1962 and was getting these books printed by its registered printers after getting NOC of the manuscripts approved by the ministry of education’s curriculum wing as per Federal Supervision of Curricula Textbook and Maintenance of Standards of Education Act 1976.

The spokesman said that after 18th Amendment the Punjab Assembly passed the Punjab Curriculum Authority (PCA) Act 2012 and PCA was established for issuance of NOC of manuscripts etc. He explained that the PCA conducted more than 150 Technical Review Committee meetings within the shortest possible time and issued 57 NOCs to the manuscripts submitted by private publishers and PTB.

He said the board ensured supply of 41 books according to the curricula 2006 by the start of academic year 2012-13 and about 28 books would be supplied by the start of next academic year 2013-14 by the PTB as per curricula 2006. He said the remaining books would be developed and printed according to the Curricula 2006 and would be supplied before the start of academic year 2014-15.

The spokesman said the PCA Act 2012 had ensured for the first time regulation of textbooks and reading materials printed/published by the private publishers. In the past PTB had been mandated only to regulate the printing materials developed and published by it.