MoE begins distributing 12.2m locally printed textbooks

KABUL on Thursday said more than 12 million locally printed textbooks are being distributed to primary schools, informing the contract for printing another 37 million books will be signed soon.

The Ministry of Education (MoE) said the 12.2 million textbooks have been printed in Afghanistan and their distribution process commenced in capital Kabul today. He said the books would reach schools in all parts of the country in the next few days.

Acting Education Minister Mirwais Balkhi,, addressing a press conference here, said, “Today we launched distribution of 12.2 million textbooks to students of primary education and the books are expected to reach all 34 provinces based on requirement.”

He said the textbooks were printed by Baheer Printing Press in Kabul in Dari and Pashto languages which would meet the need of primary education students.

“Based on assessments, there is need for a total of 90 million textbooks and 12.2 million of them were printed in the first phase and a contract for printing 37 million more books will be signed soon”, he added.

Balkhi said the procurement of 40.8 million other textbooks would be done in the second and third phases.

“The ministry currently works on a new curriculum, if the new academic curriculum is completed earlier, then we will cancel printing books of old curriculum and would instead print the books of new curriculum,” he said.

He said around 20 percent of all textbooks were acquisitioned each year which he called a big problem for the ministry. He said the ministry lacked enough resources to reproduce them.

“It is our commitment to print all text books in domestic print houses,” he said, adding the printing of these books cost 372 million afghanis paid by USAID.

Sherbaz Kaminzada, director of Baheer Printing Press, said they printed 12.2 million books from first to sixth grade students in high quality.

He said the capacity of domestic printing houses had increased and they now could print all books needed in the country.

According to MoE, 229 million books have been printed since 2004 but problems in this regard exist as the number of students increase in schools each year.

Mds/ma