Textbooks for the upcoming academic year are listed as essential items and given transport priority during the enhanced social distancing period in HCM City. — VNA/VNS Photo

HCM CITY — HCM City has created favorable conditions for the transport and supply of textbooks for the upcoming academic year 2021-22.

The municipal People’s Committee deputy chairman Dương Anh Đức has asked the city’s Department of Education and Training, in collaboration with the Department of Transport and Police Department, to carry out the work.

The city’s Department of Education and Training has set the opening of the academic year at September 6 for secondary and high school students and September 8 for primary students.

Schools will teach online until the end of the first term because of COVID-19 restrictions.

The transportation of textbooks from warehouses and publishing companies to schools, students and teachers is facing difficulties due to social distancing.

Many parents said that they had not been able to buy textbooks for the upcoming academic year.

Online bookstores are facing problems because of high demand for delivery services.

Many schools have helped their students to order textbooks, but they have yet to receive them because the schools are being used as quarantine facilities or vaccination sites.

Nguyễn Thành Trung, Chief of the Office of the city's Department of Education and Training, said most textbooks have been transported to the city and more than 70 per cent of books have been released to primary schools.

The city’s Transport Department and Police Department have included textbooks as essential items for priority for transportation and distribution until September 6.

Book publishers and distributors are encouraged to ask the city’s Transport Department to grant travel permits for shippers to enter restricted areas during the lockdown period. Each district should develop a plan based on its needs, Trung said.

The Việt Nam Education Publishing House said it opened a direct distribution channel for textbooks to residential areas in the city on August 20.

Customers can receive textbooks within 2-10 days after ordering on online sales channels for the Publishing House such as nhasachso.nxbgd.vn, edubook.com.vn, and ebdbook.vn.

Teachers and students can use electronic versions of textbooks at all grade levels free of charge on the Publishing House’s website hanhtrangso.nxbgd.vn.

Phạm Thị Hóa, deputy general director of the HCM City Book Distribution Joint Stock Company (Fahasa), said it would offer quick delivery of textbooks, teaching equipment and other school supplies from August 30.

The company has applied the three-on-site model (working, eating and resting at workplaces) in order to promptly prepare and package goods for customers, meeting the huge demand for the new academic year.

The two weeks of enhanced social distancing began in the city on August 23.

The city is using 249 schools as quarantine facilities and 453 others as vaccination sites. — VNS