The government has started refunding money to savers of troubled cooperatives. The Problematic Cooperative Management Committee has refunded Rs 1,399,216 to 378 victims on Monday. In the first phase, the committee has started refunding savings by returning the said amount to savers with savings of up to Rs 10,000.

Of the savers of cooperatives who will receive their savings back on the first day, around Rs 989,716 were refunded to 215 people from Kantipur Cooperative, Rs 41,465 to 7 people from Pashupati Cooperative, and Rs 368,355 to 156 people from Shivashikhar Cooperative, informed Dilliraj Acharya, Chairman of the Problematic Cooperative Management Committee. ‘The refund of the money has started after verifying the documents of the savers who applied for the refund of savings,’ said Chairman Acharya. ‘The aim is to verify at least 500 applications every day and refund them. However, it has not been possible to verify that many applications in the initial days.

According to the committee, around Rs 46 billion of the savings of around 76,000 savers of troubled cooperatives will have to be refunded. Most of them are small savers. Of these, those who save less than five lakh rupees are classified as small savers and those who save more than five lakh rupees are classified as large savers. The committee has stated that out of a total of 76 thousand, only 18 thousand have saved more than five lakh rupees.

Has the money been returned to savers of troubled cooperatives? How many savers have received it?

215 people from Kantipur Cooperative have been refunded Rs 989,000, 7 people from Pashupati Cooperative have been refunded Rs 41,000 and 156 people from Shivashikhar Cooperative have been refunded Rs 368,000, totaling around Rs 1.4 million. Minister for Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation Pratibha Rawal said that the work of recovering the debts of cooperatives to return the savings is also underway. She said that now that the names of the loans of troubled cooperatives have been made public, the debtors are starting to return the debts. According to the Problematic Cooperative Management Committee, the debtors of troubled cooperatives have now returned more than 20 million rupees. The committee says that the debt recovery and return of savings will move forward together.

Currently, the government is only going to refund the applications of savers from problematic cooperatives. So far, the federal government has declared only 23 cooperatives problematic. Of these, the savings of three cooperatives with small amounts have already been cleared. The government is now going to refund only the savings of the remaining 20 cooperatives.

Earlier, the National Cooperative Authority has recommended the government to declare 16 cooperatives in trouble as problematic. However, the government itself has not declared those organizations as problematic. Sources have said that the authority is in the final stages of recommending 12 more cooperatives for problematic declaration.

According to the Federation of Cooperative Victims, currently around 500 cooperatives have not refunded the savings of savers. Kushal KC, President of the National Federation of Cooperative Victims, said that the government should create an environment where savers from those cooperatives can also get their money back. "The government should return the money to the victims of cooperatives that have been declared problematic, as well as those that have not been declared but whose savers have not received the money," he said.

The government has established a 'revolving fund' to return the money of problematic cooperatives. The government has collected Rs 250 million from the fund, which will be replenished later, and Rs 350 million collected through the savings and recovery of the organizations, totaling Rs 600 million.

The committee has been reconciling savings and loans and recovering loans every day. Accordingly, in the last Baisakh alone, the committee has reconciled savings and loans worth Rs 2.9 million. During that period, a loan of Rs 2.18 million was recovered, said committee chairman Acharya.

The committee has stated that a strict policy as per the law will be adopted for loan recovery. The borrowers are prepared to be given time to repay the loan in installments with a written commitment. If necessary, there is a plan to publish a three-generation list and include the names of family members in the blacklist. Currently, the three generations of big borrowers of some cooperatives have started to be made public.

According to the committee, there are 17,000 savers with savings of less than 25,000 in the troubled cooperatives and 9,000 savers with savings of 25,000 to 50,000. Including them, 36,522 savers with savings of up to 100,000 and 21,619 savers with savings of 100,000 to 500,000 will have to return their money. There are 18,303 savers with savings of more than 500,000.

Names of major debtors of troubled cooperatives made public

In the first phase, savers with savings of up to 10,000 rupees will get all the money back. The number of such savers is about 18,000. Now, the money has been started to be returned to those savers. From the second phase, the money will be returned to all the remaining savers. But a maximum limit of 50,000 rupees will be set for it. The money will be returned at the rate of 50 percent.