The apex national co-operative body NCUI is holding a zonal conference in Chandigarh today on Saturday to strengthen the cooperative movement in the northern states. Several important cooperators of the region are expected to attend the conference.
As an effort to take on board all shades of cooperative opinions NCUI has started this series of zonal conference in all the four zones of the country. Last October the East Zone conference was held in Sikkim. The South and West Zone cooperative conferences would take place in Bangalore and Goa respectively.
The Conference is expected to be attended by Registrars, Chairmen and Managing Directors of State level Cooperatives of neighbouring states. Directors of RICMs and ICMs and state level leading cooperative representatives would also be there, informed NCUI Chief Executive N Satyanarayan.
“We try to drive home the point in such meetings that the downtrodden could be best uplifted through strengthening the cooperative movement”, NCUI President Chandra Pal Singh said to Indian Cooperative.
The Zonal Conference for Cooperatives of Eastern and North Eastern States held in Gangtok on 18th October, 2016 was inaugurated by Sikkim State Cooperative Union, S.B. Subedi, Cooperation Minister of Sikkim. The conference was jointly organised by NCUI and Sikkim State Cooperative Union.
The major recommendations of these conferences compiled would be presented before the national cooperative Congress. The Cooperative Congress is slated for February 2018.
No govt interference in the functioning of cooperatives, granting tax exemption to cooperatives, formulating a training policy for cooperatives by all the states, enhancement of women participation, etc. were some of the major recommendations of the East Zone conference held in Sikkim last year.
Holding conferences at various zone is not a measure to strengthening cooperative movement. Cooperative movement can only be strengthened by strengthening field project personnel working at the grass root level by giving job security and service facilities as given to those regularised employees of NCUI, NCCT, NCCE, ICM, Regional Coop Traning Centres who does not go to field doing only the table work sitting in the AC room enjoying the seven pay commissioned and facilities. Discarding filed project staff is the great mistake of NCUI, cutting down all service facilities and converting to contractual employee causes mental harassment to project staff. It is the main cause of failing coop movement because the person working at the grass root level is discarded.
Partly i agree with william. unless the grassroot level field functionaries are given the due importance, i mean their suggestions and reports are taken into consideration, there is no fun in holding such conferences. now you see, there is a conference going to be held in chandigarh and none of cooperators from Distt Una, HP, which is pioneer of cooperative movement in India, (1892) have any such information. the participants in this conference, as described are officials, who have least interest in cooperatives.