Rapheal John-Lall

If the pro­posed Cred­it Union and Co-op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety Bills are passed in their cur­rent form, that will lead to the de­struc­tion of the cred­it union move­ment, Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League pres­i­dent Joseph Re­my warned yes­ter­day."Right now the as­set base of the cred­it union move­ment in T&T is un­der $12 bil­lion. If cred­it unions col­lapse it will hurt the coun­try's gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP). It will de­stroy small­er cred­it unions and cause every­one to go back to the banks. In­ter­est rates will sky­rock­et.

"It is the cred­it unions which pro­vide al­ter­na­tive eco­nom­ic sources for work­ing class peo­ple. There will be so­cial dis­or­der in T&T. The av­er­age cit­i­zen will not have ac­cess to loans," he said.Re­my was part of a protest march by cred­it unions out­side the Par­lia­ment Build­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

He said the League will hold a mass meet­ing in To­ba­go to sen­si­tise cred­it union mem­bers there about the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion and will stage an­oth­er demon­stra­tion in front the Par­lia­ment Build­ing when the bills come up for de­bate.He said: "The Bill was laid in Par­lia­ment on No­vem­ber 18 last year. It has been put on the back burn­er since then.

"Our be­lief is that the Bill should not have been read in the first in­stance as we were hav­ing dis­cus­sions with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my. He gave the com­mit­ment that he will con­tin­ue to talk to the move­ment for us to iron out con­cep­tu­al and ide­o­log­i­cal chal­lenges with the leg­is­la­tion. When the for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in­ter­vened it then turned to ole mas."

Re­my said it would be more pru­dent to have one piece of leg­is­la­tion rather than the Cred­it Union Bill 2014 and the Co-op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety Bill 2014 to re­place the Co-op­er­a­tives So­ci­ety Act of 1971."There will be ad­min­is­tra­tive bur­dens both in terms of op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy and in terms of fi­nan­cial cost for the or­gan­i­sa­tion," he said.

"We are say­ing bring the en­hanced leg­is­la­tion but bring them un­der one reg­u­la­tor. Bring them un­der a reg­u­la­tor that un­der­stands the phi­los­o­phy, ide­ol­o­gy and prin­ci­ples of the move­ment. Cred­it unions are co-op­er­a­tives," he said.