Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Nov 01, 2012 News
– to ask National Assembly for additional funds
By Leonard Gildarie
Government has announced that a deal has been struck with overseas’ publishers of textbooks at concessionary prices, but it will still prove an expensive venture.
As a matter of fact, Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon, disclosed yesterday, that the administration will in all likelihood be heading to the National Assembly for additional monies to acquire the quota of textbooks. This is nearly $100M more than the government had voted for the very textbook project when it had planned to use ‘pirated’ textbooks.
A total of four contracts for learning materials, including text books, and valued at some $200M was approved by Cabinet on Tuesday for the purchase of the genuine books.
Textbooks procurement came sharply under focus this year after tenders came in for multi-million contracts for photocopied text books. Photocopied books are sold for a fraction of the original ones.
The argument has been that the high cost of the books was too prohibitive and as such, a decision was made to have the books photocopied.
According to Dr Luncheon yesterday, the country’s bilateral partners have been instrumental “behind the scenes” to help in arriving at a deal with publishers that Guyana can “best afford”.
But there will be a shortfall, he stressed.
“Yes, we cannot procure the same volumes…As a consequence one can anticipate that we will be going to the budget…going to the National Assembly for ramping up social expenditure to maintain the same level of coverage in the educational sector.”
Even at the concessionary prices from the publishers, it will still cost Guyana way more, he said.
Over the last few years, Government spent hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase learning materials, inclusive of schoolbooks.
British publishers and one Trinidad firm joined with local distributors to protest Government’s decision to have the books photocopied or pirated, saying that it would cost them, and was in reality, theft of their intellectual property.
Reports are that photocopied books were procured by Government for a number of years to provide cheap learning material for the parents of school-aged children.
Local authorized distributors managed to secure a court order ordering the books off the shelves of a number of city stores, effectively blocking the sales.
The order had also stopped Government from proceeding with its plans to buy the photocopied books which are reportedly distributed to schools countrywide.
The matter had seen the British Government stepping in for publishers in the UK.
The books were pulled from shelves of several businesses.
President Donald Ramotar had raised the issue at the United Nations, a few weeks ago, appealing for measures to help reduce education costs in developing countries like Guyana.
The issue, a sensitive one, has created worries for parents, the majority of whom just simply cannot afford the prices of the original ones.
And asked about the possibility of recycling the textbooks, Dr Luncheon admitted that the system of recycled books may not be working because of the demands by students in an increasingly, highly competitive education system.
Each child wants his own textbooks and they are not like their predecessors who were predisposed to re-selling the books once they had used them.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
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