LAHORE: Provincial Law and Cooperatives Minister Raja disclosed on Sunday that the election schedule has been issued to revive the long inactive cooperative societies in Punjab and the provincial government would soon fill the long vacant post of President of the Punjab Provincial Cooperatives Bank Limited (PPCBL) on regular basis.

In a statement issued on Sunday, the minister said that state land owned by the Punjab Cooperatives Department worth billions of rupees has been retrieved from the land grabbing mafias while the recovery of government arrears was under way. He said the relinquished land was owned by the Punjab Cooperatives Liquidation Board (PCLB) which had more than four-and-a-half-thousand kanals of commercial, residential and agricultural lands in Lahore, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Sialkot, Sargodha, Kasur, Attock, Murree and other cities.

He said that 764 kanals of land at Thokar Niaz Baig, Jalalpura and other places of Lahore alone had been relinquished during the last six months. The minister said he had also directed the Punjab Provincial Cooperatives Bank Limited authorities to take effective steps to get evacuate its lands from the grabbing mafias as soon as possible.

“The cooperatives department is being made more farmers friendly and was being gradually separating the housing sector,” he said, announcing that cooperatives stores and service centers are being rehabilitated and issuance of easy loans to farmers for purchase of agricultural implements through the cooperative bank will be resumed soon.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021