Bengaluru: The drought situation in the State has also hit the printing of textbooks.

Primary and Secondary Education Minister Tanveer Sait informed the House yesterday that the drought conditions in the State had also an effect on printing of textbooks. It has not been possible to supply textbooks to the Government schools on time. Even in private schools, the selling of textbooks has been stopped. They have still not bought it from us. However, the Government schools are not facing as much problems, he said. He was replying to a question from Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri during Zero Hour. He said that due to water shortage, three major textbook printing presses are closed. Due to shortage of paper, the printing also got delayed.

In spite of all these problems, we managed to get the paper from a Central Government Undertaking press and distributed it to printing presses. As the Government took utmost care, we were able to fulfil 90 percent of the demand of the Government schools and distribute the textbooks to the students, he said.

“We had paid advance money to the printers and got the required printing papers. The officials have worked day and night and seen that the effect of drought did not hit the printing of textbooks too much,” he said.

This is the first time we have been able to distribute textbooks, cycle, shoes and uniforms to the children while the schools were reopening, said Sait. Earlier, Kageri speaking said that even after two weeks of the schools reopening, not even 50 percent of the textbooks have been distributed. Even before printing of the books, the Govt. has paid advance money. In spite of this, the books have not reached the students. Moreover, these textbooks are of the second stage syllabus while the first stage syllabus is yet to be printed, he charged.