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Use property attachment only as last resort: Sudhakaran

Staff Reporter

State-level All-India Cooperation Week programmes begin

FOR THE PEOPLE: Speaker K. Radhakrishnan inaugurating a public meeting in Thrissur on Tuesday as part of the All-India Cooperation Week celebrations. — Photo: K.K. Najeeb

THRISSUR: Cooperation Minister G. Sudhakaran has suggested that the cooperative banks should adopt property attachment only as the last resort to recover the loans they have disbursed to ordinary citizens.

Inaugurating the State-level programmes of the All-India Cooperation Week here on Tuesday, the Minister said the poorer sections managed to get ownership over their land only after the implementation of the land reforms which itself marked the culmination of intense and protracted mass agitations. Now the cooperative banks and other financial institutions should not adopt property attachment as the easiest method to recover the loans given to the poorer people, as it would mean usurping a right which the people had wrested after long struggles. Instead, the banks must explore alternative methods to recover the loans, and resort to property attachment only if all the other options were closed, he said.

Complaints

The Minister said he had received several complaints regarding the working of the cooperative banks which were often seen catering to the needs of upper middle-class and richer sections only, neglecting the poor people whom they were originally supposed to care for. Some people had even started resorts using loans from the cooperative banks. When such misuses were resisted the bogey of communal interests was raised to counter those initiatives, Mr. Sudhakaran said.

Emphasising the need for cooperative banks to diversify their operations into newer areas, the Minister said they must be able to make a significant presence in the health and education sectors of the State. He said even though the Government was not in favour of dismissing the director board of the cooperative banks, strict actions would be taken against those banks which did not sanction agricultural loans at an interest rate of 5.5 per cent.

State Cooperative Union chairman E. Narayanan, Mayor R. Bindu, and former MLA Kadakampally Surendran were among those who spoke on the occasion.

Later, Speaker K. Radhakrishnan inaugurated the public meeting held as part of the Cooperation Week celebrations.

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