Official textbooks and manuals selected for the 2013-2014 academic year will be available in quantity and accessible to all at uniform prices irrespective of location within the national territory, Trade Minister, Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana, has said. Since 2005, he said, government has been working in synergy with publishers to make the production and distribution of selected textbooks more of a social venture with the textbooks enlisted on the chart of social goods whose prices are homologated by government.

Speaking during a press briefing yesterday August 21 to announce innovations in the harmonised process, Minister Mbarga Atangana disclosed that some of the textbooks and manuals have witnessed price reductions; some stable and others slight increases. The increases, he said, are as a result of improvement in the quality and quantity of material. There are books whose sizes, colours and textures have changed and so needed some adjustments to compensate the innovations.

Availability, Accessibility

The book lists, the publishers said, were published earlier this year giving them time to print enough copies to supply the libraries in which the books will be sold. "If you go to Maroua, Bertoua, Bamenda etc, you will see our books. We may still have one or two titles that are being shipped. You know when you print thousands of books; they can't all arrive at the same time. They arrive in batches. So, the last batch should be arriving end of August," Rogers Nforgwei, CEO NMI Education Cambridge University Press said. Like him, other publishers said all has been done to ensure quantity supply and accessibility in all parts of the country. They said they were only waiting for the list of harmonised prices to be published to make available the books. Parents and guardians, the publishers noted, can now visit bookshops as a Ministerial decision of August 20, 2013 stipulates that, "The selling of school textbooks and manuals is done exclusively in bookshops and strictly prohibited in schools and colleges."

Who Ensures Field Control?

The respect of the harmonised prices depends on how well the Ministry of Trade carries out control on the field. Publishers say they invoice everybody who comes from anywhere at the same price and giving them the discounts that is given to that category of buyer. The Ministry of Trade, through its Control Brigade and Regional Delegations is working to ensure that prices are respected by all. Control caravans, the Minister said, will soon be on the field under the control of the Director of Metrology, Quality and Prices and the Head of the National Brigade of Fraud Control and Repression for a scrupulous respect of the process.