Procedural snag lands textbooks at stores for nine years

Due to a procedural snag excess textbooks that were to be dispatched to the Valachchenai Paper Mill are lying in their stores for nine years, Commissioner General for Education Publications W.M.N. Pushpakumara said.

Around 2.5 million textbooks were to be dispatched to Valachchenai since these textbooks cannot be used by schoolchildren any further. The books are valued at over Rs. 120 million. In addition, another Rs. 1 million has to be spent to transport the textbooks.

“Therefore the total loss to the Education Ministry would be over Rs. 121 million,” Pushpakumara said.

On the advice of Education Minister Susil Premajayantha a probe is on to find out the reason why such a large number of textbooks are in excess.

However this is a common situation every year, Pushpakumara said. Discontinuing the Multi-Text Books System’, changing the curriculum, increasing the re-using rate and wrong data provided by principals are some common reasons for excess printing, he added.