NAN-H-20
Cooperatives
By Lucy Nwachukwu
Abuja, March 29, 2017 (NAN) The Abuja Cooperative Federation (ABCOF) has announced measures aimed at deepening the informal sector of the economy and ensure inclusive growth.
The President of the federation, Mr Emeka Mbagha, made the announcement at a two-day summit organised by ABCOF with the theme, `Building the Capacity of Cooperatives to Achieve Sustainable Growth and Development’.
Mbagha said the organization would deepen the sector through the cooperative inclusive strategy on access to finance, housing, pension and healthcare.
Cue in audio (Mbagha)
“What we intend to do is for the cooperatives to know that they can actually take benefit for all this things.
“These things are not reserved only for the formal sector, that the informal sector can equally take advantage of it.
“We have a number of health management organizations , and all it takes is for them as cooperatives is to be contributing within the cooperative for the purposes of taking care of their health.
“They are going to be given cards, that card is going to serve both as an ATM card and identity card and with that they can access healthcare in any of the HMO you registered
“Then for pension, currently you are aware that we have defined contributory pension, it is not only for people who are working in government or civil servants,
“We want to take it down to the informal sector, members of the cooperatives who are in the rural areas so that they can start contributing for their own pension
“With this contribution they will be able to have something to fall back on, the pension fund administrations are ready to take them on, to collect their contributions as groups and as cooperatives
“And the same way with housing, we have cooperative mortgage finance that they can take advantage of and own a house of their own, so this is the inclusiveness of the strategy that we are exposing to them here today.
Cue out audio
Mbagha stated that the federation is in the vanguard of mobilizing cooperative societies in FCT to be part of the unified cooperative platform.
He said their participation would engender the needed confidence in cooperative movement by government agencies and stakeholders.
He added that discussions were also ongoing with an existing microfinance bank to sell majority of its shares to the cooperative movement to aid the establishment of an Abuja Cooperative Micro Finance bank.
This, he said would address governments preferences to channel funds through the DMBs and MFBs rather than the cooperative movement.
“We are in the process of setting up a committee to monitor the cooperative societies in the FCT and sanction those not functioning in line with laid down rules and regulation.
“We are also working with the Chief Registrar of Cooperatives in FCT to recertify all cooperatives before uploading them into the cooperative data analysis system.
“And any cooperative that does not recertify would be deemed nonexistent and cancelled, he said. (NAN)
LCN/DOR/YEE
Edited by Nyisom Dore/Emmanuel Yashim
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