Official at the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MoAC) who look after the program do not think it possible. Reasons: There is a serious human resources crunch and also the spread of cooperatives offices is too limited to support the plan.
“We cannot meet the target. In the best-case scenario we can just initiate the process this year,” the source told myrepublica.com.
The much-hyped program with its ambitious target has turned out to be difficult of implementation due to weak preparations on the part of the government itself.
“How can we expect to bring a cooperatives shop to each and every VDC when the presence of cooperatives offices is limited to 38 districts in the country?” the source asked.
Going by existing regulations, consumer cooperatives cannot be registered without the presence of a cooperatives office in the district. So, opening consumer cooperatives in VDCs of districts where cooperatives offices are not in operation is simply out of the question.
Worse still, most cooperatives offices in the districts lack officials authorized to distribute operating certificates for consumer cooperatives. Even in places where such authorized officials are deputed, they remain largely absent.
“The plan was announced without any homework and without studying the real situation of the cooperatives network across the country,” stated the source.
The government announced it is opening consumer cooperatives in all 4,000 VDCs across the country in a bid to provide essential commodities to the poor. For this it has allocated Rs 400 million in the budget. This means each cooperative outlet gets financial support of Rs 100,000.
In the municipalities, one consumer cooperative can be set up for 30,000 people. Under the program, consumer cooperatives will make available daily consumables and essential commodities such as pulses, rice and sugar along with agriculture tools and spares, fertilizer, seeds, communications and internet services, basic medicines and educational materials.
In recently prepared regulations for operating consumer cooperatives, the government has provisioned formation of an operation and monitoring committee headed by the chairman of the district development committee.
“We have dispatched the regulations to all the district cooperatives offices this week,” said Sitaram Timilsina, registrar at the Department of Cooperatives.
Although there are some 11,000 cooperatives registered across the country, most remote districts have a weak cooperatives network. A large number of the registered cooperatives operate in urban areas.
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