Kathmandu, July 6: Rastriya Janamorcha Chairman Chitra Bahadur KC has said that the issues of cooperatives were shadowed due to political instability in the country.
At a programme organized here Saturday on cooperative organizations’ funds misappropriations, KC stated that hundreds of thousands of people have suffered badly after their deposits of the cooperative organizations were embezzled, and blamed the political upheavals for this sorry state.
KC argued that the people and political parties should pile pressure on the stakeholders to address the issues of the cooperative organizations adding that a handful of people misused the hard-earned money of the poor people.
On the occasion, Nepali Congress chief whip in the parliamentary party Ramesh Lekhak termed the issues of cooperative organizations ‘a highly-sensitive challenge’ and added that people have deposited billions of money in the cooperative organizations.
Lekhak said that serious concerns were raised regarding the security of the entire cooperatives’ deposits due to some infamous cooperatives.
The involvement of the public figures and the state’s responsible persons in the embezzlement of the cooperative funds was a matter of concern, according to Lekhak.
Also speaking at the event, CPN (Maoist Centre) general secretary Dev Prasad Gurung said that the cooperative notion was not implemented in Nepal as per its purpose adding that its real philosophy was to advance towards socialism through the cooperative movement.
Gurung noted that the cooperative movement in Nepal was limited to a profitmaking job instead of exporting goods by their production and asked the government and major political parties to remain serious.
Gurung said that a loud voice should be raised against those individuals involved in cooperative organizations’ funds embezzlement and called for action against the wrongdoers.
Constitutionalist Kashiraj Dahal said that those individuals in the state mechanisms have delayed resolving the issues of the cooperative sector and called for forming a high-powered commission to address the challenges in the cooperative sector.
Vice-chairperson of Rastriya Janamorcha Durga Poudel said that the cooperative organizations working as per the objective, philosophy and principle of the cooperative were also made victims as the cooperatives have been narrated as synonymous to fraud due to some wrongdoers.
