School Books Ready for Distribution

BOOKS worth more than 2.5 mil/- will be distributed to all secondary schools in the country in January, next year.

This was said in Dar es Salaam by the Permanent Secretary (PS) in the Prime Minister's Office (Regional Administration and Local Government), Mr Jumanne Sagini, during a visit to the Government Procurement Service Agency (GPSA), where he inspected the books.

He said the books have been donated by the US government. During President Jakaya Kikwete's visit to the US he asked President Barack Obama to give Tanzania a donation of science books for secondary schools in the country.

"The books are for Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology and we will distribute them to all schools before January 10 ready for students to start using them after opening schools," he said.

He added: "The books have been prepared basing on the curriculum of Tanzania and we began to receive them at the beginning of this month.

The aim is to end the shortage of books in the country." According to him the situation of textbooks has not improved as currently there is a ratio of one book to five students. Books worth a total of 302bn/- are needed to reach the one book one student ratio.

Mr Sagini said that the government has been allocating funds to procure books, saying that the money will come from the capitation grant which is allocated annually.

To make sure the books reach the targeted schools, Education Officers have been directed to cooperate with distributors by showing them the schools with critical shortages.

The Director of Education Coordination, Mr Bernard Mkali, said that students should pull up their socks and make sure they use the books properly.

"The books are for students from Form One up to Four. They should not be kept in library but distributed to students, "said Mr Mkali.

Director of Procurement Management Unit at GPSA said that they have received 533,520 books for physics, 533520 for Chemistry, 664,480 for Biology and 766,480 for Mathematics.

"We will make sure that before January 10 all the books will have been distributed. We only want cooperation from secondary school education officers," he said.