The guardians claim that shops make a profit of around 30% by selling the textbooks even after giving the 10% discount and the schools get a significant portion from the margin.
“I had gone to my child´s school to ask for the list of textbooks but they handed me a discount card. When I insisted for the list, they said it´s with the stationery shop,” claimed Surendra Karn, who refused to name the school fearing reprisals for his child.
District Education Officer of Morang Pramod Sah conceded he was aware of private schools taking commissions on uniforms and books and said though they are required to put textbooks list on notice board they haven´t been following the rule. Stationery shops put sticker above the printed price of the book to charge higher rate for the books.
Around 300,000 students study in 313 private schools in the district. President of the Morang chapter of Private and Boarding Schools Organization of Nepal (PABSON) Rajesh Das said it was wrong to force the parents to go to specific shops. “It is not ethical to make extra earnings from the procurement,” Das said.
Guardians claimed schools select books of random publications making it difficult for them to go elsewhere.
The schools print their names on the invoices allegedly to keep track of commission they entitled to get. “We use different pads for different schools to keep record of sales on behalf of each school,” a shop owner argued.
The guardians claimed uniform shops also overcharge for clothes. A school operator claimed the shops agree to provide clothes at a lower rate than the market price at the time of agreement but charge more at the time of selling. “They extract the amount so that they can pay commissions to the schools,” the school owner said.
Meanwhile guardians have submitted memorandums to the chief district officers (CDO) in 16 districts in the eastern region Sunday demanding action against the syndicate of schools and shops. Regional president of guardians´ association Devi Panthi and Morang district president of the association Khagendra Prasad Bhattarai handed over a memorandum to Morang´s CDO Suresh Adhikari.
The stationery shops, on their part, have shut down their shops since Sunday afternoon saying mobs posing as guardians and consumers created problems under the pretext of monitoring if any one has marked up the prices of textbooks.
Morang district vice-president of the Nepal Books and Stationery Federation Madhav Adhikari claimed the marked up stickers were pasted on books by the publishers themselves and not the shops and demanded security for the shops. The shopowners also met with CDO Adhikari demanding security.
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