CDC starts monitoring price of school textbooks

Bhaktapur, April 18

Curriculum Development Centre has started monitoring the textbooks of institutional schools that are being sold by private publishers who charge excessive prices.

The CDC has started collecting samples of the books published by various publishers from today to evaluate the price mentioned on them.

The CDC had started monitoring textbooks after Education minister Giriraj Mani Pokharel directed them to check the textbooks and their prices in order to take action against publishers who are at fault.

Tukraj Adhikari, spokesperson of CDC said that today they talked to around 40 publishers to ask them to submit their sample books.

“Some publishers submitted their sample books while some of them are going to submit their books tomorrow,” he said.

The Ministry of Education had set the price of textbooks on November 16, 2012 on the basis of colour used in the books. The price of books using single colour, two colours and multiple colours should be on a par with the government ceiling.

“However some publishers were found to be selling the textbooks at higher prices than the government ceiling, thus we will be evaluating the books and their prices and take action against the defaulting publishers,” Adhikari said.

Nepal government has authorised certain printing press to print school textbooks from grade I to V for community schools, while the private publishers can publish the school textbooks from grade I to X after getting permission from the CDC.

“While getting approval from CDC for publishing books, they provide us dummies that have black and white pages.

Thus, it is very difficult for us to determine the number of colours used in the book and their prices,” he said.

The CDC today collected sample textbooks from various publishers such as Asia Publication, United Publication, Kosheli Publication, Megha Publication, Unique Publication, Sangam Publication and others.

He informed that if anyone is found to be breaching government rules and regulations, action will be taken against them as per Education Regulations.