labour Contract Cooperative Societies will be allocated work under several Central and State Government sponsored schemes like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), construction of roads, canals, bridges, government buildings, residential buildings for poor people, tree plantation, nursery building and social development related programmes of various departments with an aim to strengthen the labour societies in the State.
Apart from this, financial assistance will be provided to the cooperative societies through State Government in the form of loan as well as subsidy under Integrated Cooperative Development Programme (ICDP) in the state, said Uttarakhand Cooperative secretary Vijay Kumar Dhaundiyal while interacting with media persons after presiding over a meeting with the representatives of district labour societies in a programme held in Dehradun on Sunday. Emphasis is being laid on making people of the State especially in rural and mountainous parts aware of the significance of cooperative movement. The role of cooperatives in promoting self employment, especially in rural areas of the state, among other aspects will be strengthened.
ICDP aims at strengthen existing primary cooperative societies and other functional cooperatives, to develop Primary Agriculture Cooperative Society (PACS) as multipurpose entities, to improve existing cooperative structure including modernisation and upgradation of management of cooperatives. There are 759 PACS and 2500 cooperative societies in the state. Some of them are non functional. Non- functional societies will be made operational by organising training programme for the members.
He added that the objective of this interactive session with the district cooperative society representatives was to understand their basic problems on the ground and help them achieve their goal. The problems raised by the members in the meeting will be resolved and several measures will be taken to enhance the societies in the state. Skilled development based training programme on cooperative society’s objective and guidelines, audit, legal issue, how to fill financial papers among others will be organised for the members periodically in Dehradun and other parts of the state.
Uttarakhand Cooperative (Headquarter) assistant registrar Ramindri Mandrawal said that the issues raised by the members were heard and steps will be taken for their redressal. A proposal for allocating projects being completed under MlA local area development fund to be given to society members will be sent to the government.
The cooperative movement has reached the level of Nyay Panchayat and steps are being taken to ensure that all the families are covered under the cooperative movements in the state. The PACS members are the bottom-tier of the Short Term Cooperative Credit Structure functioning at the grassroots (Gram Panchayat) level.
These are primary societies owned by farmers, rural artisans and others and intended to promote thrift and mutual help among the members; cater to their credit requirements and provide credit-linked services like input supply, storage and marketing of agricultural produce etc.