Prince Philip presents youth award

BY A STAFF REPORTER

Kathmandu, Nov 16: His Royal Highness Prince Philip, in a special ceremony, presented the Duke of Edinburgh Youth Award Scheme to Snehesh Shrestha today.

HRH Prince Philip is the Founder of the Duke of Edinburgh Youth Award Scheme.

Snehesh Shrestha, who is a student of Shuvatara School, has become the first Nepalese to receive this prestigious gold award of the Duke of Edinburgh Youth Award Scheme from the hands of HRH Prince Philip.

The award, which began in 1956, has at any one time, at least 450,000 youth taking part in it all over the world. The programme aims to encourage young people between the age 14 to 25 years to undertake a series of voluntarily selected activities over a specified period of time, to develop their ability to carry out sustained free-time activities, their skills, attitudes, perseverance and community commitments in an atmosphere of enjoyment and support from adults and peers.

The programme started in Shuvatara School about 19 months ago. Presently, there are 39 boys and girls of the school at the bronze level. Snehesh Shrestha is the only one at the Gold level. He completed his gold award requirements of 18 months of voluntary activities covering the skills, service, recreation and expeditions components of the award scheme.

This programme is all set to spread to other schools in and out of the Valley with the cooperation of the British School and other interested benefactors.

Workshop on Nepalese migrants

BY A STAFF REPORTER

Kathmandu, Nov 16: A day-long workshop on Nepalese migrants, organised jointly by the Department of Labour and Employment Promotion, the Nepal Institute of Development Studies and in collaboration with the UNDP, ILO and Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies, concluded the other day.

The participants, which included migrant workers, pledged to work towards a consensus as to what can be done to minimise the vulnerabilities of the Nepalese migrant workers and maximise the benefits from overseas employment. The participants also dwelled on the rising trend among Nepalese to go abroad for employment and the increasing volume of remittance being send home by them every year.

The workshop, according to the organisers, was part of the larger exercise on mobility and AIDS in South Asia and supported by the UNDP in partnership with the government's concerned departments, organisations of the civil society and bilateral and multilateral agencies like the UNAIDS. This initiative is aimed at paving the way for policy and programme consensus to support safe mobility of economically disadvantaged people seeking employment opportunities overseas.

Anomalies seen in cooperatives

BY SURENDRA UPRETY

Kathmandu, Nov. 16: Can anyone imagine that the loan disbursement amounting to Rs. 800 million would give a return of Rs. 500 million just within a year?

That too at a 21 per cent interest rate while they offer over 16 per-cent interest to the depositors plus a variety of incentives which sometimes goes as high as 24 per-cent.

This is what the accounts of the savings and credit co-operative societies have shown.

A joint research carried out by the Co-operative Development Board, Co-operative Department, National Co-operative Federation of Nepal and Nepal Rastra Bank on over a dozen savings and credit societies recently showed this odd result.

How is this possible? It is because they force the borrowers to pay the interest on the total borrowed amount until the whole sum is paid back. They don't get any reductions in interest for the regular instalments. "The co-operatives charge a flat interest rate - the same interest amount even after the borrower pays back some portion of his credit - to make a high profit and produce the surprising results," says Ramesh Paudel, General Manager of National Co-operative Federation of Nepal (NCFN).

"Although co-operatives has emerged as big business with an annual transaction of over 9 billion rupees and creation of employment, it seems to be taken as an easy money-making business especially the savings and credit societies," he adds.

NCFN Chairman Deepak Prakash Baskota blames the concerned authorities for the anomalies that have surfaced in the name of co-operatives. "The Co-operative Department registered Co-operatives against its philosophy which allowed easy-money-makers to enter this field," he says. Co-operatives in principle should be run by a group of people who are its members. But this is not the case in Nepal.

Co-operative Department's former Registrar Giri Raj Gautam opines that lack of comprehensive laws is a barrier to control easy money making business. "Taking advantage of the weaknesses in laws, the co-operatives deviated from their noble philosophy," he adds.

Would the situation improve with the recent amendment of the Co-operative Act 2048 BS that is awaiting the Royal Seal before it comes in to force?

The amendment has a provision that all co-operatives collecting the deposits from non-members should either change them into members or refund their deposits by the end of this fiscal year.

"It would be difficult for the co-operatives to transform all their depositors into shareholders or refund their deposits," says C.B. Lama, Chairman of Kantipur Finance Co-operative Society Ltd.

Most of the co-operatives now depend on the non-members for their survival and profit making.

"We have more than 22 thousand depositors with meagre incomes. And they do not want to be the members of such societies which will make the matter worse," he adds.

Rakesh Rawal of Oriental Co-operatives Ltd. says that most of the savings and credit co-operatives would be in a dire situation if they had to refund the deposits of the non-members as directed by the new provision.

Kailash Bhakta Pradhanang, Chairman of Nepal Federation of Saving and Credit Co-operative Union, however welcomes the new amendment of the Act as it would be in favour of the service oriented co-operatives and check easy money making.

Another problem with the savings and credit societies is that only 35 out of some 1,500 have obtained permission to run banking activities. The law says that they have to get permission from the central bank to have transactions with the non-members.

Rajendra Nepal, the Law Officer of Co-operative Department, says the absence of laws was the cause of the anomalies in the co-operative business and believes the present amendment of the Act would tie them to their philosophy.

We have yet to see whether his hope will turn into a reality.