The government in fiscal year 2007/08 had announced to provide Rs 100,000 each to such co-operatives, providing daily consumer goods to people in about 4,000 village development committees (VDCs) and municipalities across the country. [break]
Bhim Bikram Gurung, chairman of District Co-operatives Association, said the shortage of sufficient money to invest and absence of government´s proper monitoring mechanism to assess the performance of such co-operatives are the factors behind the poor performance of consumer co-operative shops.
The government had provided a subsidy of Rs 3.6 million through the Department of Co-operatives (DoC) to open 36 co-operatives in the district. However, local people have complained that not a single government official turned up to monitor the performance of such co-operatives last year.
The government has formed a district-level team led by Local Development Officer of concerned district to monitor the cooperatives.
Chief District Officer Kali Prasad Parajuli, who is also the member-secretary of the monitoring team, claimed that the team had been trying its level best to monitor the consumer co-operatives given the limited resources available to them.
He further added that the team had recently monitored some co-operative shops being run in Chaubise and Constituency No. 2 in the district.
Co-operative shops in about a dozen VDCs, including Bodhe, Chhintang and Marekatahare, have already been closed. Worse still, a member of the team disclosed that executive committee members of some co-operatives themselves are misusing the government subsidy.
However, Jaya Ram Shrestha, director of District Co-operatives Division Office, claimed that none of the consumer co-operatives running under government subsidy has been closed.
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