KATHMANDU, Dec 28: The government has asked the problematic cooperatives to submit their work plan to return the money of their member depositors by mid-April this year.

At a time when the government is facing widespread criticism for failing to address the grievances of depositors of a number of cooperatives, the Ministry of Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation (MoLMCPA) has directed the cooperatives concerned to come up with the plan to relieve the depositors. While a number of cooperatives’ operators have been found embezzling the money of their depositors, the government bodies formed to look after the issue have been crawling at snail’s pace to resolve the crisis.

The Department of Cooperatives has received overwhelming complaints from the member depositors against the executives of cooperatives who have fled away with the deposited money. However, the government has declared only over a dozen of cooperatives as problematic cooperatives till date.

Since the past one decade, member depositors have been making hue and cry for not getting back their money from the cooperatives like Oriental Cooperative. They have hardly received anything in respite for their hefty amount. Oriental Cooperative alone has been alleged for embezzling over Rs 7 billion of the depositors. 

The government in 2015 formed a ‘powerful’ Problematic Cooperatives Asset Management Committee in order to recover the assets of the troubled cooperatives and to liquidate their assets in order to provide them to the victimized depositors. However, the committee has hardly accomplished the given task in any case.

Recently, a large number of cooperatives fell into crisis after the liquidity problem was cited in the country’s banking system. Following the incident, the government formed a high-level Cooperative Sector Reform Recommendation Task Force 2022, which submitted its report a few months ago.  

Based on the recommendation of the taskforce, the government has halted the registration of all types of cooperatives by the federal government, provincial governments and municipalities, along with expansion of the working areas and service centers of the operating cooperatives. Although the taskforce has envisioned forming a separate oversight agency of cooperatives, the government is yet to implement the recommendation.

Government distributes identity cards to 223,330 poor families 

The government has distributed identity cards to 223,330 poor families from 23 districts. According to the MoLMCPA, an additional 271,460 families are under consideration for the distribution of such cards.

In 2016, the government conducted a baseline survey of 25 districts with a target of distributing identity cards to the poor people living in extreme poverty. But the government work is pretty slow in order to benefit the poor people either.  

 
• government
 
• depositors
 
• cooperatives