In the hilly district of Rangamati, the ethnic minority children are happy to receive books in their respective mother tongues along with the general textbooks.
New textbooks were handed over to them on Sunday, the first day of the new year.
Since 2017, the government has been distributing books in Chakma, Marma, Tripura, Garo and Sadri languages to the children of minority ethnic groups to study in their mother tongue.
Free books have been distributed to 707 primary and 140 secondary schools in the district this year.
Children of Chakma, Marma and Tripura languages living in Chittagong Hill Tracts were given pre-primary books.
Bangla TribuneZilla parishad Chairman Angsui Pru Chowdhury said that the training of teachers for teaching in different mother tongues is ongoing.
In Rangamati, books in their respective languages have been provided to pre-primary to third grade students to prevent the dropout of minority students.
Ratul Chakma and Tultul Chakma, second grader students of Rangamati Banrupa Model Government Primary School, said that they were very happy to receive Chakma language books because they could learn a lot from those books.
A parent, Gyan Priya Chakma, said: “We could speak our own language but could not write. As a result of this initiative, our children are learning to write as well as speak. In this way, our language will survive for thousands of years.”
According to Rangamati Primary Education Office sources, 89,150 children of 10 upazilas will get 3,76,529 new books through the book festival in the academic year 2023.
Bangla TribuneAll the books for pre-primary, third, fourth and fifth classes are available. The demand for first and second grade was about 60,000, out of which 45,051 books were found. The remaining books will be available in the next two to three days.
Besides, 66,250 books in different mother tongues have been distributed to 29,806 children of Chakma, Marma and Tripura ethnic groups.
District Secondary Education Officer Mridul Kanti Talukder said that the demand for books in the district this year was 8,68,143. Among them, 4,54,351 books were found. 42% of the books are still not available. He could not tell when it would be available.