The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Supply of textbooks hit in Adilabad district

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Saturday, Jun 28, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Supply of textbooks hit in Adilabad district

S. Harpal Singh

ADILABAD: No copybook perhaps mentions the kind of problems plaguing textbook supply to schools in Adilabad district this year. For the petty, yet important reason of non release of transport charges to Mandal Educational Officers (MEO), lakhs of textbooks are lying at the district-level distribution point at Mancherial.

In some of the cases where the MEOs have managed to shift a few thousand books to respective mandal-level stock points, the local school head masters are faced with transportation fund crunch. In fact the MEOs need to offload the textbooks at the concerned school points. About 28 lakh textbooks are required to be supplied to different schools in Adilabad district.

Despite the usual problems of printing about 26 lakhs books have been positioned at Mancherial. Against an estimated transport expenditure of about Rs.25,000, the MEOs have been given only Rs. 5,000 each for transporting all the books required for schools within respective mandal. Similarly, head masters of schools need to shell out about Rs.500 for bringing the allocated books to their schools in case of availability at the mandal-level point. In some cases students are being made to carry books from the mandal-level point to their schools.

“We demand immediate release of transport charges to the MEOs so that students are not put to trouble,” says Swamy Reddy, district president of the United Teachers Federation (UTF). “In order to address this recurring problem the Government needs to open stock points at Nirmal and Adilabad towns from where it is easy to transport the textbooks. In fact the Education Minister Damodar C. Raja Narasimha had promised to open a stock point at Nirmal but nothing materialised as yet. deliver so far. At present the 26 mandals in the western side of the district suffer because of the longer distance from Mancherial,” he suggests.

In addition, thousands of students of Urdu and Marathi medium in the district are also put to inconvenience due to shortage of books. It is learnt that text book printing activity when it comes to the minor media schools is rather laggard.

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