Groups of people have made notable success by improving their living standards with their collective efforts overcoming negligence to and lack of policy supports for the cooperative sector.
Some cooperative societies, formed in the capital with small subscriptions of members, are now viably running small and big businesses ranging from tailoring and grocery shops and transport and real estate firms.
A small number of cooperatives have also started establishing light and small industrial units.
Apart from raising incomes of the members, the cooperatives are creating jobs for hundreds of others in society.
‘We were 100 poor women students of adult literacy centres at Nurerchala (near Baridhara in Dhaka). In 1990, we started cooperative activities by depositing Tk 50 in monthly saving. Now we have more than 25,000 members and shareholders who collectively own Tk 700
million cash and assets,’ Golap Banu, the president of the Baridhara Mahila Samabai Samity, told New Age.
The organisation was registered with the Department of Cooperatives in 1996.
About Tk 600 million, out of the total capital Tk 700, has been given to the members of the organisation in loan for investing in various income-generating and resource-building activities — opening tailoring and grocery shops, running commercial transports and light engineering industries, etc, Banu, a housewife, said. The rate of recovery of loan is about 96 per cent.
About 3,000 members of the organisation have now become self-reliant, she said.
The organisation also bought about five acres of land in Gazipur for a housing project for its members.
She said that the organisation was running in a rented office. ‘But we have started constructing the head office on four kathas of land at Nurerchala.’
Nitya Adhikari, manager of the society, said that the organisation had 64 staff members who receive monthly salaries from Tk 4,000 to Tk 64,000.
Seven like-minded people formed the Kingshuk Multipurpose Cooperative Society at Mirpur in Dhaka in 1987 with each member contributing Tk 50 every month to its fund, according to M Golam Faruq, former chairman of Kingshuk.
It is now an organisation of 82 members and more than 50,000 shareholders who collectively own Tk 2,000 million in assets, Azaher Ali Molla, the current chairman of the organisation, told New Age.
The organisation has investments in businesses such as agricultural marketing, security services, health club, filling station and several housing, commercial and tourism complexes.
With technical support from a South Korean company, Kingshuk has set up a factory to manufacture energy-saving lamps in 2010 at a cost of about Tk 7 crore, he said.
It has 850 full-time paid staff members and at least 2,500 temporary employees, Molla, also an associate professor at the Institute of Health Economics in Dhaka University, said.
Asked about making policies for the organisation, he said that the general assembly consisting members of the organisation makes policies and elects a governing body by secret ballots to run the organisation for three years.
About the benefit of the shareholders, who do not have voting rights, Faruq said that the organisation had given 12 to 16 per cent of dividend so far on the investments of individual shareholders.
Asked about the secret of success of the organisation when most of the cooperatives are either sick or non-functional, Molla said that there was no magic wand to make a cooperative successful.
Faruq said that democratising the decision making process and implementing the decision collectively can make a cooperative successful.
Kingshuk now gives advocacy support for other cooperative organisations to help them survive and flourish.
-With New Age input
