nearly thirty ministers have assumed the portfolio of the ministry of social affairs since independence, half of whom, at least, have referred members of the board of directors of one or more cooperative societies to the prosecution.
the current minister mai al-baghli has referred seven boards of directors of cooperative societies and 36 employees to the public prosecution, on charges of squandering public money and embezzling shareholders’ money because there is a suspicion of corruption and manipulation of their rights, and because of their administrative and financial violations.
my friend, who has been dealing with a large number of cooperative societies for half a century, says that only a few of them do not constitute a headache for him and the rest of the suppliers. all of them exaggerate the demand for free goods when offering any new goods to them, and it is a ridiculous demand that supermarkets do not know, such as “sultan” and “lulu”.
also, these private markets are keen on good storage and do not return spoilage to the supplier, except in the narrowest limits, and the opposite is true in all cooperative societies, as spoilage is always big.
in addition, most of the supermarkets pay what they owe at regular intervals, and this is the opposite of what is prevalent with cooperative societies that are often deliberately late in paying suppliers’ dues, for periods that sometimes extend for a year and often also force the suppliers to resort to specific financial institutions, to collect the value of their bills, with a discount rate of 5% of its value, in return for expediting payment.
these cooperatives do not realize, or perhaps realize that the costs of their poor services, storage, delay in payment, and what they demand of free and damaged goods are ultimately borne by the consumer, the shareholder, and not the merchant, who usually adds the costs of these things, and this is what raises the prices of materials in cooperative societies, without logical reason, makes their competitors from supermarkets in a better position.
if every cooperative had made its payments to suppliers quicker, raised the level of stocking even a little, and ceased to demand free goods, the prices of all its products would have been greatly reduced.
the minister of social affairs is required to activate her oversight over the cooperatives and to put pressure on the federation of cooperative societies to consider the above issues. it is not reasonable that the land and buildings of any cooperative and many of the services provided by the state to it are free, and yet the shareholder does not get materials and prices that are better than all or most supermarkets.
the services provided by the cooperatives to their shareholders are very modest and do not commensurate with their profits. the toilets in many of them are no less bad than those in the gas filling stations as if the shoppers and workers in the cooperatives do not deserve something clean at the level of what is available in the malls for example.
my trader friend concluded by saying: “the idea of cooperative societies has become obsolete and a source for illegal profit for the managers and boards of directors of many of them and its philosophy or way of working needs to be radically changed.”
it also requires a harsher punishment for the transgressors of money, especially if they are among those who have been entrusted with it, and this is one of the tasks of the current minister of social affairs, who has shown seriousness in treating some of the ruined and corrupt conditions in many of them.