The government has returned more than Rs1.51 billion to the depositors of troubled cooperatives.

While presenting the data prepared by the Problematic Cooperatives Management Committee on Tuesday, Minister for Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation Balaram Adhikari told journalists about the initiative taken by the government to resolve cooperatives’ issues. He said the depositors of the troubled cooperatives were paid back partially.

Just a few days ago, the National Campaign for Protection of Cooperative Depositors (NCPCD) gave the government until November 20 to pay back the depositors, warning of a fourth phase of protests if the government did not implement the agreement reached with them. A point of the agreement between the NCPCD and the government was to return the savings to the depositors.

But Keshav Prasad Paudel, member secretary of the Problematic Cooperative Management Committee, said that the agreement between the government and the NCPCD and the process of returning the money of depositors by their committee are different things.

“However, their demand also has played a role,” Paudel told the Post.

Member Secretary Paudel also clarified that those who have less than Rs100,000 in savings have been fully paid and the money to other 438 people with bigger deposits will be released soon.

The government is prepared to return the money of the depositors through the troubled cooperatives management committee. The minister said that 6,593 of the depositors who claimed their cash have been paid. According to government data, 62,760 depositors have demanded a refund of their money.

Now, the savings of the remaining 56,605 people will be returned with the capital, material assets and debt recovery of the cooperatives concerned, Minister Adhikari said.

Ministry officials also said that the work has progressed to collect needed funds to return the deposits. “The depositors’ money will be returned by auctioning off the confiscated assets of the troubled cooperatives,” Paudel told the Post.

Representatives of NCPCD, however, claimed that they were not informed about returning the money to the depositors. Stating that 325 cooperatives victims are in the struggle committee, they argued that if the government had returned the cash, they would have got the information about it.

“This is all fake information disseminated by government officials,” Ram Narayan Shrestha, secretary of the NCPCD, told the Post. “We are not ready to believe until we meet the victims confirming to have received the money as claimed by the government.”

The ministry also reiterated that the government is working to amend the Act related to the cooperatives so that the culprits of cooperatives fraud will be brought to book.

The statements of the authorities that implement government policy on returning the money are also contradictory.

During the budget presentation for the fiscal year 2024-2025 on May 28, the government announced a plan to pay back small depositors.

“To solve the problem in the savings and credit cooperatives, arrangements will be made to return depositors' money up to Rs500,000 by using the property of cooperatives operators or of their immediate kin as collateral,” then-finance minister Barsha Man Pun said in his budget speech in Parliament.

At the time, ministry officials had told the Post that the government policy, already endorsed by Parliament, would take effect from the start of the new fiscal year. However, five months into the new fiscal year, the government is still busy drafting the guidelines to execute the refunding process, said the officials.

But officials at the Department of Cooperatives have a different take.

“Apart from drafting the guidelines, we also are awaiting real data on the cooperatives victims but we are yet to receive the details from the provincial and local governments,” Tol Prasad Upadhaya, spokesperson for the department, told the Post recently. “Once we obtain the data, the money of the victims will be returned by selling the property of the people who misappropriated the funds.”

However, Paudel, the member secretary of the Problematic Cooperative Management Committee, said that they have everything necessary to implement the plan except the budget.

“The government has yet to allocate the budget to implement the plan announced during the budget presentation, which is to return deposits up to Rs500,000,” Paudel told the Post.