The government has made yet another promise to cooperatives victims with regard to returning their deposits from fraudulent organisations.

The KP Sharma Oli government, in its policies and programmes presented by President Ramchandra Paudel to a joint session of the federal parliament on Friday, has committed to establish a fund through which the small-scale cooperatives victims would get back their deposits.

However, the victims said that they don’t trust the announcement as successive governments have betrayed them after making promises.

Last year, the government in its annual budget for the fiscal year 2024-25 had committed to return depositors’ money up to Rs500,000 in the first phase.

Then-finance minister Barsha Man Pun, presenting the budget in Parliament on May 28 last year, reiterated that the government had attached a top priority to providing justice for the tens of thousands of victims duped by hundreds of cooperatives across the country.

“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,” Pun had announced during the budget readout in Parliament.

However, a year after the announcement, victims have not got their deposits back from fraudulent cooperatives.

Frustrated at the government’s non-compliance with its own commitment, hundreds of cooperatives victims have been protesting at Ratna Park for a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, the government has announced the establishment of a fund under the National Cooperative Regulatory Authority (NCRA) to return the savings in troubled cooperatives.

President Ramchandra Paudel, reading out the government’s policies and programmes for the fiscal year 2025-26 in Parliament on Friday, announced the establishment of a fund under the NCRA. He stated that this policy aims to reimburse the smaller depositors of cooperatives.

However, people who lost their savings to the cooperatives doubt the government’s fresh commitment. They point to similar promises made in the past that have not been honoured. The new announcement could mean nothing but an attempt to sell new promises without delivery, they suspect.

They complain that the government has neither provided data on the number of small depositors nor clarified the basis on which the refunds will be made. In such a situation, they argue, there is no reason to trust the government’s promises without a concrete plan in place.

“What is the basis for the refunds—will the amount be recovered by liquidating the assets of cooperatives operators, or will it be paid directly from the treasury?” victims question the government.

Madhav Shrestha from Kapan, Kathmandu, who lost around Rs6.5 million in savings—made over nearly a decade of work in South Korea—to a troubled cooperative, describes the situation as “deeply unfair”.

“Now the government says it will only return the money of small depositors, but what about us? That’s an injustice,” Shrestha says.

Similarly, Shova Sigdel, a victim of Uttam Cooperatives, who started crying while talking to the Post over phone, expressed her frustration.

Considering that the government’s previous decisions have not been properly implemented, she has no faith that the current one will be fulfilled.

“When there is a government, we expect it to act with some maturity. Instead, it has only given us false hope, rubbing salt on our wounds,” she said.

In a bid to address the cooperatives crisis, the government decided on December 24 to amend some cooperative-related laws through an ordinance. Subsequently, on January 27, it established the NCRA, ostensibly to resolve the issues within the sector.

However, more than three months since its formation, the NCRA has failed to make any tangible progress owing to the government’s failure to appoint its chief. After inception, it was led by an acting chief. Most recently, it has been without even an ad-hoc leadership, raising further concerns about the government’s seriousness in tackling the crisis.

While the government claims it will establish a fund under the same NCRA to return the savings of small-scale cooperatives victims, the depositors themselves remain unconvinced about the government's assurances.

In October last year, the government had claimed to have returned more than Rs1.51 billion to the depositors of troubled cooperatives.

While presenting the data prepared by the Problematic Cooperative Management Committee, Minister for Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation Balaram Adhikari had told journalists about the initiative taken by the government to resolve cooperatives’ issues.

He had said the depositors of the troubled cooperatives were paid back partially.

However, Kushluv KC, chairperson of the National Campaign for the Protection of Cooperatives Depositors (NCPCD), claimed that they had no idea about the cooperatives victims getting their money from the government.

“We also read the news about the minister claiming to return the money to some of the cooperatives victims, but none in our contact has received it,” KC said.

Stating that 325 cooperatives victims are in the struggle committee, they argued that had the government returned the cash, they should have the information about it.