KOCHI: Finally, the government will initiate steps to mitigate the hefty Rs 1.3-crore loss incurred by the exchequer following its insistence on disposing of 13 lakh school textbooks bearing the name of the former SCERT director appointed by the then UDF Government.
Education Minister C Raveendranath told reporters here on Saturday the government will consider distributing the buffer stock stored at the Kerala Books and Publications Society (KBPS) warehouse. “At present we have completed the distribution of Vol I textbooks to schools.
The government will find out whether the buffer stocks can be disposed of through some method,” he said. However, he claimed it was the negligence on the part of the KBPS and not the government which resulted in the heavy loss to the exchequer.
“After the LDF came to power we decided to split the textbooks into three volumes. The instruction was given to the authority concerned but it was the KBPS which printed the excess quantity. The entire responsibility of the incident lies with them,” said Raveendranath.
A KBPS officer told Express every year the government maintains enough buffer stock to meet any urgency. “Last year 25 lakh textbooks were printed as buffer stock, of which 12 lakh books could not be used. Though the remaining 13 lakh books could have been distributed this year,the KBPS was forced to discard them. The minister is raising baseless allegations against the KBPS,” the officer said.
Though Express tried to contact KBPS MD Tomin J Thachankary he was unavailable.
It was the Express article ‘Not by the govt text. And it costs the state exchequer `1.3 crore’ which appeared in the June 2 edition which shed light on the issue.