Situation of Governance in Nepalese Cooperatives

Governance in the Nepalese cooperatives are not as satisfactory as many of the cooperatives, mostly older cooperatives, are far behind to apply good governance in their organization. Many of the cooperatives have not held their annual general meeting for a long time and in some cases exceeds more than a decade.
In many of the cooperatives, specifically in the central and apex level cooperatives, there are the same persons holding the post of executives for a long time and it is very sad to say that which cooperatives they are representing from is still confused. The executives held post have failed to renew the membership of their cooperatives from where they are representing.

They are simply doing the politics in the name of cooperatives and boasting that they have been elected person with members’ votes. Many of the cooperatives have given less importance to hire skillful and competent persons for the day to day operations of the cooperatives. They are also neglecting the importance of developing management capability and are in favor of conventional management system. Likewise, the elected persons in the board of the cooperatives are not directly involved in any business activities. They have simply held the power in the cooperatives and not dealing with the business of their cooperatives. Due to this situation, cooperatives and their members are not oriented to business direction. Many of the cooperatives from primary to the apex are doing business not directly benefiting to their members but to those who have invested a large amount in the cooperatives and operating the cooperatives as a private firm or company. Similarly, failures to integrate members’ needs into cooperative business, failure to discriminate against non-members, failure to maintain independence, failure of democratic structures, loss of member loyalty, failure to maintain image and reputation, securing the future of cooperative are the major governance problems the Nepalese cooperatives are facing.

The above mentioned bitter scenario is generic in terms and does not include all the cooperatives as well. However, the new cooperatives working in the rural areas have far more satisfactory situation regarding the good governance. They have timely held the AGM, have clear demarcation of authority among the executives and the managers as well as the employees, have no hanky panky and have maintained transparency as far as on their knowledge and capacity.

source : sahakari darpan