The once financially strong Fishermen Co-operative Society (FCS) is now even unable to pay monthly salaries to its staff, let alone financing welfare activities. The FCS, which is a semi-government welfare association which primarily serves the poor fishermen community of the metropolis, is facing a devastating mismanagement following Rangers' raid busting its vice chairman on corruption charges two months ago.
"The government has not yet nominated its eight members to complete the board of directors with seven elected members," Elected Director, Asif Bhatti told Business Recorder on Monday. He said the PPP government rather put the existing committee to run the FCS daily affairs on a halt, causing a complete suspension of payments of salaries and utility bills.
"The government turned the management committee dysfunctional, which was set up after Rangers took away FCS vice chairman for 90 days and the FCS was uncertain to carry out its affairs including financial and managerial," he said. Blaming the PPP's political interference in the affairs of FCS, he said that the society was undergoing the worst situation since its establishment in mid 1940s. "The PPP government is responsible for the FCS current worst condition," he lamented.
At present, he said that there was no one to officiate as a signing authority to at least draw cash to pay salaries to the staff and pay bills. "The government is disinterested and therefore suspended everything that was running FCS in the crisis," the elected director said. To a question, he said the FCS was carrying out fisheries auction on a daily basis and depositing the revenues it acquired through the seafood sales into banks but it had been unable to draw cash. "There is no authority in place," Bhatti said.
The government has used the FCS as a tool of corruption, he alleged, saying that whatever worst the society underwent was a result of the political interferences, distorting its original set-up and mechanism of several decades. "There is no whereabouts of chairman FCS, Nisar Morai," he said, adding that "there should not have been Qamar Siddiqui either to lead the FCS for he faces corruption charges," he said. The government's interventions brought the society on the verge of financial collapse, he maintained.