If, as has recently been reported in the media, the Ministry of Education is involved in the copying and distributing to state schools of textbooks published by overseas publishers without the knowledge and, by extension the consent of the Minister of Education, that in itself would be an unflattering comment on the manner in which the ministry is administered.
The supply of free text books to state schools is a major and important logistical exercise and one would expect that the minister would be kept abreast of its progress ahead of the start of the academic year. Up until now, this newspaper has seen no evidence that the Education Ministry is indeed involved in what is, in fact, a clear and unmistakable transgression of copyright law though at least one letter has appeared in the media, purportedly from a named teacher at a named school in which the writer claims to have seen the copied books immediately after they were delivered to the school by the ministry. The copied books, the writer of the letter says, did not bear the stamp customarily affixed to books distributed to state schools by the Ministry of Education. The implication here is that the absence of the stamp is a ruse designed to distance the Education Ministry from the illegally copied books.
The illegal copying and sale of published texts–pirating, as the practice is commonly known–has become commonplace in Guyana. It has, over time, become a multi-million dollar-enterprise from which the producers, retailers and a fair number of middle men profit handsomely. We have come a long way from the days when school texts could only be bought at bookstores. These days, they can be bought on pavements in downtown Georgetown and from vendors outside municipal markets. There had also been rumours circulating some time ago that even some teachers in state schools may have been part of the illegal textbook trade.
While we must wait for Minister Shaik Baksh’s promised verification as to whether or not his ministry is now part of the book pirating bandwagon, what is undeniably true is that the authorities have, over a number of years, turned a proverbial blind eye on the practice of illegally reprinting and selling published school texts. Successive ministers of education have adopted an evasive posture whenever the question has been raised. In fact, Minister Baksh must be given some credit for promising to look into the allegation being made against his ministry, since, as far this newspaper can recall, it is the closest any education minister has come to offering to do anything whatsoever about pirated texts.
On the other hand and apart from the fact that it would be strange, indeed, if such an operation could take place within the ministry without the knowledge of the minister, it has to be said that Minister Baksh ought, by now, to have been able to verify whether or not the allegation is true. Up until now, nothing has been forthcoming from the ministry on the matter despite our enquiries with the offices of both the minister and his permanent secretary; and, truth be told, it has to be said that the response of the ministry so far to our efforts to learn what the minister has found out is reflective of the same pattern of evasiveness that has customarily characterized the official posture.
Apart from the fact that the ministry’s evasiveness on the issue is nothing new, the feeling exists that it is caught in a bind. It has been suggested that the Education Ministry’s posture on the matter of text book pirating is a function of the fact that the copied texts are much cheaper than the originals. That would mean of course that it would be cheaper for the ministry to make available to children attending state schools free textbooks. The argument has even been made—not officially by the ministry but unofficially by one of its officers—that the illegality of the practice of piracy has to be set against the fact that it allows for textbooks to be made available at cheaper prices. It is one of those awkward arguments that advance the notion that the ends justify the means but which, inexplicably, fails to take account of issues of legality and morality.
The handful of overseas-based publishers and their local representatives and local booksellers have had to go it alone in the fight against piracy, since the beneficiaries of cheaper books, parents, particularly poor parents, clearly consider themselves as having no vested interest in a return to the more expensive published originals. Here again, the point about the legality of the practice is lost amidst what, admittedly, is a not altogether irrelevant but completely emotional argument about the cost of textbooks.
As it happens, no matter how aggressively the argument about the higher cost of published originals is made, the plain truth is that piracy is a transgression of the law. Moreover, there is the equally relevant issue of the loss of revenue suffered by the intellectual owners of the books, the publishers who produce them at considerable cost and the legitimate booksellers who market them. Just a few years ago, piracy accounted for the closure of one of only handful of bookstores left in the country and Mr Lloyd Austin, of Austin’s Bookstore, told this newspaper recently that the pirates have reduced his own sales of textbooks by around 70%. Mr Austin, argues, correctly in our view, that it is an irony that the viability of a legal business operation–his own bookstore–is being patently and blatantly undermined by an illegal “hustle” and, moreover, that the authorities appear altogether indifferent to the situation.
Weak as our current copyright legislation is, it still has sufficient teeth to put an end to the practice of pirating text books and while we say again that the issue of the high cost of published texts cannot be ignored, to reduce the argument to either one or the other would be to abdicate responsibility to simultaneously uphold the law while pursuing viable options for ensuring that text books are affordable.
We have endeavoured to determine whether Minister Baksh has been able to ascertain the truth or otherwise of the claim that his ministry is now directly involved in the illegal reprinting of published textbooks. In our view a response has been far too long coming. The quicker we know the truth about the ministry’s involvement or lack thereof in this practice, the sooner, hopefully, the minister’s response can take us to the next level, that is, determining how we deal both with the problem of piracy and with the challenge of finding legitimate ways of making textbooks less expensive.
