Reza Mahmud :
Academic book publishers have urged the government to prepare long-term curriculum, syllabus, pattern of examination questions and systems of number distributions.
They said that most of them have suffered utmost from huge loss of business for frequent change of curriculum, syllabus, pattern of questions and number distributions.
They said there are huge labour and money investment behind giving a book to a student. But a small change makes those valuable books waste paper and all hard labours and financial investments of publishers and authors go in vein.
When contacted, Arif Hossain Choton, President of Bangladesh Publishers and Book-sellers Association, briefly known as BAPUS told The New Nation on Tuesday, “The government has announced that it has made a plan to prepare new curriculum for the young learners. We urged and hope that the government will prepare the curriculum for minimum three years, so that the publishers can take preparation without anxiety.”
He said without sustaining minimum three years, a publisher may not get return of his investment in publishing an academic book.
The Bapus President said, any big harm of publication business affects about 25 lakh people related to 26,000 members of the sector.
“The publishers are working hard to build a knowledge based nation. But they are the worst sufferers of the coronavirus pandemic as their business hit hard due to all the educational institutes were totally closed for nearly two years,” Arif Hossain Choton said.
The business leader said, the academic and creative publishers failed to sell books worth about Tk 12,500 crore in the last 18 months.
Most of the traders are now facing hardship to pay their shop rent and wages of employees.
Bapus leaders said about 2,500 small and large publishers are among their members are now trying to survive hardly.
Most of the publishers while talking with The New Nation echoed the same.
“The Banglabazar publishing businesses are suffering most due to repeatedly changing of curriculum and pattern of questions,” Engineer Kawser Hasan, Managing Director of Panjeree Publications Limited told The New Nation.
He said, the government should not be involved with the publishing businesses and should care the problems of the publishers.
When contacted, M A Musa Khan, Publisher of Book Point, a renowned publication in Banglabazar told The New Nation, “Changing , curriculum, syllabus and pattern of number distribution frequently hit the publication business seriously.”
He said, any small change in number distribution in any subject or books of any class may harm widely different publishers.
“There is no alternative to sell all those books as waste paper after changing number distribution patterns,” Musa Khan said.
The government should prepare syllabus and curriculum for long term, he urged.
