Book Bank Scheme: 1 lakh used books collected by Bhopal Municipal Corporation have turned into scrap

Book Bank Scheme: 1 lakh used books collected by Bhopal Municipal Corporation have turned into scrap

The books collected under the project were meant to help needy and poor students.

Staff ReporterUpdated: Wednesday, March 03, 2021, 11:10 PM IST
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About 1 lakh used books collected by BMC to help poor students have turned into scrap in Bhopal. | FPJ

BHOPAL: The 100,000 used books collected by Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) have turned into scrap. The books were collected under a scheme to help needy and poor students. The BMC officials have failed to find beneficiaries for the books. All the bundles of books of school education and books on competitive examinations are biting the dust. Most of the books have turned into scrap.

The officials of the civic body are now planning to recycle and reuse the paper for notebooks. The earlier collection — and now recycle — of books will put an additional burden on the civic body that is already reeling under a finance crunch. The scheme has, so far, proved to be useless.

The used books were collected by residents under the Book Bank Scheme two years ago. At the time, the residents were told that needy students would receive the books. The collection was done from every ward and packed in boxes.

BMC had to ensure that the books that were torn were turned usable and readable. But, after collecting nearly 100,000 books, the civic body officials failed to find beneficiaries. One of the reasons was the change in syllabus. So, no needy student received any benefit of the scheme. Now, the officials are planning to convert the books into notebooks. They are in touch with organisations that will use the paper and reuse the books as notebooks.

Prem Shankar Shukla, who is in charge of the scheme, said they had kept nearly 20 per cent of the books in the libraries owned by the civic body. The remaining books would be reused as notebooks and distributed among poor students, he said.

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