LAHORE, May 31: The Punjab Cooperative Act 1925 will be amended to regulate the working of the cooperatives and prevent the cooperatives mafia from looting the people.

This was stated by Punjab Cooperatives Minister Col Malik Muhammad Anwar (retired) here on Saturday.

He said that the task force constituted for suggesting amendments in the act had started formulating recommendations for the purpose.

He said that a bill based on the recommendations of the task force would be moved in the Punjab Assembly for amending the act soon.

He said that cooperative finance corporations were serving the people in other countries but mafia had used the same for depriving the people of their money in our country because of lack of regulatory controls.

He said that unscrupulous elements in cooperative housing sector were compelling the members of cooperative societies to surrender their plots on the pretext of failure to pay instalments to benefit from the boom in the property prices. They were minting money by selling such plots at exorbitant rates later.

He said that the government would ensure complete refund of money to the affectees of the cooperative finance companies by 2005 in four stages. Refund of money to the affectees with claims up to Rs100,000 was almost complete and arrangements had been made to refund 50 per cent money to affectees with deposits ranging between half a million to one million rupees by disposing of the properties of defunct cooperatives at the prevailing market value.