Without considering the private printers failure to print quality school text books, the government has decided to award 55 percent of the printing of free school textbooks to private printing firms under open tender procedure.
45% of the printing of school textbooks distributed free of charge for the year 2021 by the Department of Educational Publications will be given to Government Printing Cooperation, ministry officials said.
Printing of school textbooks during years 2018 and 2019 has been entrusted to the Government Printing Cooperation directly away from the tender procedure.
The Ministry of Education will be awarding the open tender for printing a portion of the total required school textbooks for the year 2021 away from the open tender procedure to the Government Printing Cooperation.
This decision has been taken by the ministry considering the capacity of the Cooperation and its previous performance.
However Sri Lanka school text book printing process has been messed up by private printers who failed fulfill their task up to the stipulated quality standards, government audit inspection divulged. .
A number of 39.71 million copies of 419 books valued at Rs.3,499 million had been printed for the year 2019 through 2 government institutions and 27 private printers assigned by the Educational Publications Department of the year 2018.
Even though a committee comprising a Commissioner and two Deputy Commissioners had been nominated and the responsibility of printing of text books had been assigned to printers at several instances on recommendations of the said Committee
Approval of the Cabinet Appointed Procurement Committee had not been obtained to assign private printers for the printing of text books by the relevant committee appointed by the Education Ministry, government audit query revealed.
Commissioner General of Educational Publications has issued instructions to schools to apply for text books by computing the required number of essential text books accurately so as not to store surplus books in stores.
However, a number of 10545 Text books had been issued to 11 schools in Colombo area by the Department exceeding the requirement thereof, auditor general’s report divulged.
(LI)