BHUBANESWAR: The Text Book Printing Press under the School and Mass Education Department has got a new look. To meet the rising demand of textbooks for students of Class I to VII, new machines have been installed and officials concerned aim to put them in use from this month itself. However, its infrastructure and staff shortage issues are yet to be addressed. Established in 1962 on 19 acres of land here, many of the machines in the Printing Press had become obsolete by 1978 and not much work was being done here although it had the infrastructure. As a result, production and supply of books were hit to a large extent. At present, the Text Book Printing Press, managed by the Text Book Production and Marketing (TBPM) unit of the Department, is able to print less than 20 lakh books per annum. While last year, the requirement of books was 2.4 crore for State-run schools, only seven lakh could be printed here. Similarly, against the demand of 2.52 crore books this year (academic session of 2012-13), 15 lakh books were printed. Under these circumstances, the School and Mass Education Department has been outsourcing printing and binding works of textbooks to private agencies. This year, 95 private printers and 112 private binders were roped in for printing and binding works respectively. Since the outsourcing system is not foolproof and target is not met, a modernisation and capacity augmentation of the departmental printing press proposal was placed before the State Government which was approved last year. Government sanctioned ` 2.5 crore to take up the modernisation programme in the last financial year. Accordingly, the TBPM last month installed five state-of-the-art machines for printing, cutting, stitching and packing of books at a cost of ` 2.38 crore. Of this, two machines worth ` 1.8 crore are meant for off-set multi-colour printing alone and have the capacity of generating 20,000 books an hour. “With installation of the new machinery, TBPM is hopeful of printing around 1 crore books from next academic session,” said TBPM Director Ashok Pattnaik. On the other hand, even as the printing press has been modernised, problems of infrastructure and staff shortage continue.Against the sanctioned posts of 642, there are only 371 staff in the departmental printing press and mostly machine man, binder and attendant posts are lying vacant. “Every month, some technical staff are retiring with no new appointments against them,” Pattanik said. The regular staff apart, there are 90 daily wagers who have been working in the printing press for the last 15 years. “They have been demanding regularisation since long,” Pattnaik added. Infrastructure wise, there is just one godown with a capacity of 50 lakh books. The Director said TBPM requires an additional godown for storage of paper and existing godown capacity needs to be enhanced by another 50 lakh. “With the increase in production capacity of the printing press, more space will be required to store the books from next year,” he said.
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