PESHAWAR: There are fears that a funding delay by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government for the printing of school books will hurt the children’s education in the first months of the 2023-24 academic year beginning next month.

Sources in printing presses and KP Textbook Board told Dawn that around Rs10 billion was required to print 60 million textbooks in the next academic year but the provincial government had so far released only Rs1 billion for it.

Books are given away to the students of public sector schools free of charge by the provincial government at the start of every academic year. However, there is a high likelihood of a delay of some months or so this time around due to a delay in thebooks’ delivery.

Owner of a printing press commissioned by the KP Textbook Board to print schoolbooks for the next academic year told Dawn that the waste of student time was proportional to the funding delay.

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“If the finance department immediately releases the required money, the students will suffer a learning loss of around one month and if the release is delayed further, then the loss will be bigger,” he said.

Sources claimed that the textbook board as well as the elementary and secondary education department had been requesting the finance department for two months to release the book printing funds to avoid mess at the start of the next academic year, but to no avail.

They said that according to the schedule for the printing of books and payment to contractors, the government paid half of the money on the delivery of half order, while the dispensation of the rest after all other books were given away.

The sources said the printing presses had completed the supply of 60 per cent of schoolbooks to the textbook board but the board released Rs1 billion only to them instead of Rs5 billion.

Official documents show that the printing presses have supplied 140 books out of 232 for nursery-intermediate classes to the board, while the provision of other books had totalled 50-99 per cent. Likewise, 50 per cent of the 15 ordered books have been supplied.

However, the supply of 38 books has yet to begin.

When contacted, adviser to the chief minister on elementary and secondary education Rehmat Salam Khattak said that he had convened a meeting about the non-release of funds for textbook printing last week.

“I met the finance secretary about a delay in printing funds several days ago and got an assurance about the release of funds in a couple of days,” he said.

Mr Khattak said officials of the textbook board should have informed him after that meeting about the non-release of funds but unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

“I will take up this issue with the finance secretary yet again,” he said.

An official at the textbook board told Dawn on condition of anonymitythat printed books had already been dispatched to the districts for distribution to schoolchildren.

He claimed that representatives of printing presses visited the offices of the board on a daily basis to inquire about payments and they had even threatened a sit-in outside the premises.

A printing press owner said that like others in that business, he was too short of money to continue printing textbooks.

“We will resume printing books only after the government clears out dues,” he said.

Sources in the textbook board claimed that it used to pay printing companies from its own resources whenever the funding was delayed by the finance department, which reimbursed the amount afterwards.

They, however, said it was no more the case as the board had already exhausted its savings to pay printing firms and was left with money only to pay salary to employees until June.

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2023