Speed up passage of Co-operative Bill

Daily Graphic, Pg. 44, Mon. April 06/09

Story: Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho

THE Co-operative Movement of Ghana (CMG) has appealed to parliament to speed up the passage of the Co-operative Bill to meet the peculiar needs of co-operative societies.
Making the call at a seminar organised in Accra by the CMG for members of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Employment, Social Welfare and State Enterprises in Accra, members of the CMG maintained that, if passed, the Co-operative Law would replace the existing NLC Decree of 1968, which, according to the CMG, has outlived its usefulness.
According to the CMG, “the NLC Decree does not meet the peculiar needs of co-operatives that are evolving, and it does not meet the current macro-economic environment and therefore does not promote growth of the co-operatives”.
According to the President of CMG, Mrs Aba Smith, the co-operative system has become so viable, especially in its contribution to community development, that it has become an enterprise to reckon with.
She said poverty remained the biggest challenge to the development of Ghana and it was the aspiration of the CMG to generate wealth and improve the lives of people, stressing that “co-operatives can work together with the government, to help reduce poverty”.
She further stated that a collaboration between the co-operative movement and government would help improve business confidence in the informal sector, which employs majority of people in the country.
“If this joint venture is achieved together, I hope we would collectively create wealth for our people and therefore push the private sector forward and make it truly the engine of growth.”
She therefore appealed to the parliamentarians to combine their efforts to ensure the speedy development of co-operatives and the passage of the Co-operative Bill into law for the benefit of all Ghanaians.
The General Secretary of the CMG, Mr Albert Prempeh, who briefed the parliamentarians on the past, present and future of the CMG, said it presently had 4,320 societies, 128 district unions, 34 regional unions and 16 national associations, saying that the Co-operative Council was the supra national apex body of the movement, which is currently made up of 14 national associations and unions.
According to him, the government has been supportive to co-operative development, but however pointed out that there were some areas where government actions were inimical to the development of the movement and cited the takeover of the Ghana Co-operative Bank by the Bank of Ghana in 1986, among others.
The parliamentarians in their submissions on some of the issues raised by the CMG, called on the CMG to work at ensuring a better recognition of the movement in the country.
They also called on the executive of the movement to furnish members of the committee with specifics on what the draft bill was about so that they could study and make meaningful contributions when it was brought before the House.