As part of government's efforts to have 40 per cent of textbooks printed locally, Minister of Education, Mr. Lee Ocran, on Thursday toured some printing houses to ascertain their level of preparedness towards achieving it.

The visit was to acquaint himself with activities and available facilities to make informed choices when awarding contracts for the printing of textbooks for basic and Junior High Schools across the country.

The printing houses visited include Graphic Communications Group Limited, Sec-Print Ghana Limited and Buck Press.

Mr. Ocran said currently, there were five million pupils in basic schools and it was important for every pupil to have a textbook, saying government would be printing a minimum of three subjects which include Integrated Science, Mathematics and English.

He expressed satisfaction at the level of preparedness by all the three houses and assured them that government would soon allocate the contract for work to begin.

Mr. Kofi Buckman, Managing Director of Buck Press, said the printing industry had a lot to offer and Ghanaians stood to gain when these industries were engaged and utilised.

He said their equipment represented what is being employed elsewhere in modern book production saying the industry could produce 1,000,000 copies of full colour 120 paged-books in 14 days.

Mr. Buckman noted that some Ghanaians had invested colossal amounts of dollars in printing equipment which were under-utilised, and called on government to procure textbooks which were always imported, from local industries to generate employment to the vast number of unemployed youth.

He said if the local industries were engaged, they would offer employment to the unemployed youth, pay more taxes into the national revenue basket, save foreign exchange annually for the country, offer students attachment programmes, build local print and binding capacity and purchase electricity, water and other utilities and service to boost GDP.

Mr. Buckman appealed to government to ban the importation of books which run between $100 million to $250 million annually due to incentives government allowed for importers to the detriment of local printers.

Mr. Richard Addo, Chief Executive Officer of Sec-Print, said the company specialised in high end 2 and 5 colour offset and digital printing, text and exercise book printing, product labels, packaging and various types of print finish service.

He said the company was established to fill the print deficit which existed in the country adding that the start of its operations coincided with government’s move to grow the local printing industry and create employment for Ghanaians.

Mr. Addo gave the assurance that the company was looking forward to cooperating with government to print quality textbooks in the country.

Mr. Kwesi Kersi, General Manager in the Technical Service Department of the Graphic Communication Group Limited, said the company had the capacity to print 125,000 copies of books within an hour and was still in the process of acquiring other machines that would help boost productivity.

He said they had positioned themselves well and could produce all the books required by government from primary one to JHS 3 for all schools across the country.**