Karachi: The Sindh government has ordered the immediate recall of all copies of the English language textbook for Class 9 prescribed in the province after it emerged that it is missing information about the Islamic belief of the finality of Prophethood.
The previous edition of the Class 9 English textbook published by Sindh Textbook Board contained the text but it has omitted in the new edition.
In a video message, Sindh Education and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani said that he had immediately convened a meeting of the relevant officials when it came to his knowledge about the omission of the important text.
The provincial Education minister said that he had ordered to conduct a thorough inquiry to determine the causes. He said that the probe would find out whether it was an omission or someone intentionally did this act.
Re-printed books
Ghani said that in the meanwhile all the copies of the new edition of textbook were being recalled as in their place new books would be published after the due inclusion of the text so that the re-printed books were taught to the students.
“Everyone should know well that the Sindh government is not at all negligent of this issue as due punitive action will be taken against whoever is found responsible for this mistake”.
The Education minister said that detailed inquiry report would be made public so that people could know whether someone had intentionally deleted this text.
“People should know that whether it is Chairman of Pakistan Peoples Party Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Sindh chief minister, or the provincial Education Department, as being Muslims they would never think of committing any such mistake or do such an omission as doing so would surely hurt their own religious sentiments,” he said.
Seeking a response
“Just give us sometime so that we are able to conclude the inquiry to fix the responsibility and also to recall the textbook from the market,” he said.
Meanwhile, Opposition Member of Sindh Assembly belonging to Jamaat-e-Islami, Syed Abdul Rasheed, has submitted a call-attention notice in the assembly secretariat on this issue to seek response from Sindh Education minister on the floor of assembly as who was responsible for this omission.
The Opposition MPA of the religious political party said that the omission was intentionally committed at the behest of someone whose identity should be ascertained.
The lawmaker said that earlier on the floor of the assembly he had pointed out such mistakes in the textbooks published by the Sindh Textbook Board but to no avail.
