The National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) is taking action against the printing press owners who provided substandard textbooks this year.
“Our investigation team is already working on this issue. So far, we received complaints only over the phone. The team is going to the field and taking action against substandard textbook printers,” said Ratan Siddique, the chairman in-charge of the NCTB.
“At first, we have asked the printing press owners to replace the torn textbooks. If they fail to do so, the NCTB will slap fines and blacklist those presses. Their performance guarantee will be cancelled and the 15% security deposit will be confiscated,” said Siddique, also a member of the NCTB’s textbook distribution committee.
Officials of the NCTB have already gone to a school in Kishoreganj and told them to replace the textbooks.
“There will be no compromise over quality when it comes to textbooks,” Siddique said.
He further said necessary steps would be taken regarding allegations against Jhalokati’s Timirkathi School which reportedly asked its students to pay for the free textbooks.
On January 1, Textbook Festival Day was celebrated across the country with school and madrasa students receiving their sets of textbooks on the first day of the New Year.
Nearly 333.8 million copies of textbooks were distributed among more than 44.4 million students of pre-primary, primary, ebtedayee, secondary, dakhil and technical schools for the 2016 academic year, according to officials at the Ministry of Education.
However, there were complaints from different schools that many of the textbooks were torn or damaged.