THE Education Ministry has begun inviting tenders to pre-qualify for its 2004 textbook contract, nearly a month before its scheduled date, but denied that the move was in response to criticisms of the lateness of this year’s deliveries.

“It’s an attempt to expedite matters,” Edwin Thomas, the ministry’s communications officer told the Observer. “It is not a direct response to anything… it is not because of anything that happened this year, last year or any other year,” he emphasised.

According to Thomas, the ministry usually invites tenders, between the months of October and November, to print and distribute more than two million textbooks to primary and all-age schools under its Primary Textbooks Programme.

However, he added that this time around, the invitation is “just slightly earlier than usual”.

Last month, the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) criticised the government, claiming that its tardiness in awarding the contract resulted in the late delivery of books to schools. At the same time, the JLP chided the government for awarding the contract to an American firm.

Von Hoffman Corporation won the government contract to print the texts after bidding almost J$3 million less than local companies who, up until last year, enjoyed what has been described as one of the largest single contracts awarded to local companies.

But according to JLP spokesman on education, Senator Anthony Johnson, “the relatively small” J$3 million the government would save from awarding the printing contract to the overseas firm could not compensate for the problems associated with not having the books on time.

The ministry in August acknowledged that the contract was awarded in June of this year, three or four months behind its usual schedule. This resulted in the first of the deliveries to schools starting on September 2, the same day most schools reopened their doors for the new school year.

But Education Minister Maxine Henry-Wilson insisted that the lateness had nothing to do with contracting an overseas firm, saying the company had performed within its contract.

Meanwhile, director of procurement at the ministry’s Media Services Unit, Leevon Phillips, told the Observer that deliveries to four parishes — Clarendon, Portland, St Thomas and St Catherine — have already been completed while books are currently being delivered to a fifth parish, Manchester.

He was however adamant that deliveries to all parishes would be completed by the second week of October, as promised by the ministry in August.

“All the books are here, so the (delivery) pace has accelerated significantly,” he said. “In fact, deliveries are proceeding according to plan and we still expect (deliveries) to be completed by the second week of October.”

The government’s primary textbook scheme provides nearly two million free texts to primary and all-age schools across the island.

Established in 1984, the programme sought to provide students from grades one to six with suitable textbooks in mathematics, language arts and reading, and later included textbooks in science and social studies in 1990.