Government will today announce a multimillion dollar deal with several publishers to procure original textbooks for distribution in public schools—just over a month after it tried to justify buying pirated versions.
Stabroek News understands that government is prepared to spend between $150 million and $170 million on the copyrighted primary and secondary school textbooks, though a number of them have been taken off the list due to cost factors at this time.
A cabinet source confirmed that the matter was discussed extensively at yesterday’s cabinet meeting and the green-light was given after confirmation was received that a number of British and Caribbean publishers will be offering discounts.
Efforts to contact Education Minister Priya Manickchand proved futile. However, Attorney General Anil Nandlall told Stabroek News that Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr. Roger Luncheon will be making statement on the issue at his post-cabinet press briefing today.
While government has allocated the money to import the original textbooks, local legal and trade representatives of the publishers, with whom government says that they had been having continuous talks, informed that they were not aware of the decision and have not been approached to tender.
Attorney for the UK Publishers Andrew Pollard, when contacted, said that he had not heard of the decision and was sure that neither had his clients. “This is news to me… I have not received a word and I’m almost sure they (the publishers) haven’t,” he said.
Pollard’s response came in wake of a publication in the Guyana Times yesterday that Manickchand disclosed that government made a decision to purchase texts and was in the process of acquiring over $150M worth of original textbooks and was looking to have all the texts by mid-November.
Lloyd Austin, longtime agent of the publishers Royards, Oxford, Longman and others, told Stabroek News that the publishers have not contacted him either. He said only recently Emma House, of the UK-based Publishers Association, and the CEO of Royards contacted him and asked for an update. Austin said he will be seeking confirmation today.
In September, the Publishers Association took to the High Court and obtained an injunction against five stores blocking the sale of photocopies of their respective texts. Their move came after tenders were opened for the supply of pirated copies of texts to the Ministry of Education for its book distribution programme. Government had preselected seven companies to bid to supply photocopied texts.
Controversy had been sparked by the government’s declaration that it was pursuing contracts for the pirating of textbooks for public school students. The government’s position was epitomised in the following statement by Luncheon at a recent press conference: “You could be a publisher with a copyright and you could offer to sell me the book for $1. My friend is a good photocopy artist and he could sell me the book for 10 cents. All of you are going to bid but who do you think is going to get it?”
At a press conference, President Donald Ramotar, in response to a question from this newspaper on the matter had said, “We are looking at that [the situation] right now. I am hoping to have an amicable solution to that matter, while at the same time we are trying to get value for money and ensure our kids have books and so forth.”
