PESHAWAR: Muttahida Labour Federation Pakistan (MLFP) has urged the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to restore its previous policy for printing textbooks to save the local printing industry from closure and thousands of workers from being laid off.

The demand was raised by the federation’s leaders and representatives of Frontier Printing and Publishers Association at a meeting here on Saturday, according to a statement.

On the occasion, the federation’s president Liaquat Badshah and general secretary Mohammad Nabi said that change in the printing policy had created problems for the local printers and publishers as they could not compete in the open bid system.

They said in other provinces the contracts were awarded to local printers, but in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa printers from other parts of the country also had the opportunity to participant in bids.

The federation’s leaders said that if the previous policy was not restored thousands of people would lose their jobs.

The people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, they said were already facing worst kind of unemployment due to closure of dozens of industrial units and in case the printing industry was closed problems of the poor people would further increase.

The printers, publishers’ association leaders, including Iqtidar Ali, Shehr Yar Lodhi, Shakeel Qureshi and Haji Akhtar informed the meeting that they had held several meetings with relevant officials of Textbook Board Peshawar, information department and education department, but officials did not keep their word despite promising to solve their demands.