BANGALORE: In an effort to end the misery of parents and students, the Department of State Education Research Training (DSERT) has initiated steps to ensure supply of textbooks on time during the next academic year.
The department has already called for tenders from printers to print and supply the textbooks.
DSERT, the academic wing of the department of public instruction (DPI), has called for tender to print and supply 3.5 crore books.
According to DSERT sources, bidders have to supply textbooks in 310 different titles for classes one to ten.
These include the free copies that will be supplied to government schools and the copies for sale at book stores.
Most of the textbooks are in Kannada and English. There are also a small number of textbooks in Tamil, Telugu, Marathi and Urdu.
Textbooks will be supplied to about 1.02 crore children who are studying in 56,441 primary schools and 11,835 high schools across the state.
The sources also said that as the number of books were too large to be supplied by a single printer, the entire work of printing and supplying them was divided into 71 work packages and was intended to be assigned to different printers who have adequate machinery and other infrastructure.
“Bidders have to print and supply to the respective DDPI offices across the state,” officials said.
When asked about the delay in supplying textbooks in previous years, officials said that the tender earlier used to be called in the month of March or April.
It would take at least 90 days to complete the process of bidding, printing and supplying. “This time we have called the tender now itself for next year,” officials said.
When contacted, Commissioner of DPI, Harish Gowda, said that the books would be ready by January 2010.
“School children will not have a problem getting textbooks next year,” he promised.
ashwini@epmltd.com