Inquiry commission seeks term extension

KATHMANDU:

A high-level commission formed to launch an inquiry into problematic savings and credit cooperatives has sought a term extension of three months citing investigations are yet to be completed.

The term of the commission, which formally started working in the first week of December, is expiring on February 19. “Since most of our works are ongoing, we want the government to give us additional three months’ time,” chairman of the commission Gauri Bahadur Karki said.

Karki said he has informally informed about the matter to the secretary of the ministry of cooperatives and poverty alleviation. “I hope he will convey the message to the concerned authorities,” said Karki, a former chairing judge at the Special Court.

Since its establishment, commission has declared 70 savings and credit, and multipurpose cooperatives as troubled. They were labelled as troubled based on over 13,000 complaints lodged by depositors, who failed to recover their money from these institutions.

However, the money at risk at these institutions is yet to be determined. “We couldn’t come up with the figure on the claim amount on time due to lack of human resources. But we have recently outsourced this task and are expecting a detailed report on it soon,” Karki said.

Although the report will give a clear picture on depositors’ money at stake at these ‘troubled’ institutions, it is estimated the amount would reach several billion rupees.

To recover this amount, the commission has so far summoned chairpersons of 65 cooperatives. But only 17 have appeared at its office, including Sudhir Basnet of Oriental Cooperatives and Rajendra Shakya of Guna Multipurpose Cooperatives.

Then last week, the commission wrote to the Police Headquarters requesting it to round up chairpersons of 48 financial cooperatives that had failed to report to the commission. Following this, seven cooperatives sent their representatives to the commission’s office.

Source: THT