PESHAWAR, Dec 5: The NWFP government has decided to act against the defaulters of the former Frontier Cooperative Bank after its special scheme offering waiver of mark-up failed to yield the desired results.

After coming into power, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal-led NWFP government had announced a special scheme under which the liquidated bank’s defaulters had been offered to repay principal amount of their respective individual loan by March 31, 2002, and enjoy mark-up waiver.

The government had taken the stand at that time that the decision had been taken in an effort to help the people of the NWFP get rid of ‘the curse of interest’.

However, the special scheme failed to yield the desired results as only a negligible number of defaulters availed themselves of the scheme.

According to an official handout issued here on Friday, a decision to the effect of taking action against the defaulters was taken at a high-level meeting presided over by provincial finance, development and planning minister Siraj-ul-Haq.

In line with the decision, defaulters would be arrested and mortgaged properties would be confiscated and auctioned to recover the defaulted amount.

Directives in this respect were also issued to the departments of home, police and revenue to extend support and resources to the cooperative department to make the campaign a success.

The meeting was also attended by the provincial chief secretary Ejaz Ahmad Qureshi, secretary finance Ziaur Rehman, secretary agriculture and cooperative Farid Khan, registrar cooperative societies Ghulam Farooq Khan and assistant registrar Khalid Mumtaz as well as Qazi Muneerul Haq, executive vice-president of the provincial public sector Bank of Khyber.

The minister, according to the handout, regretted that delaying tactics of the previous governments made the poor farmers, cooperative bank employees and account holders suffer, besides inflicting irreparable losses to the agriculture and economy of the province.

“This issue could have been resolved in time and amicably if the delaying methods and pressures were not exerted by the past regimes,” the official handout quoted the finance minister as having said at the meeting.

The MMA government had announced that it will waive the bulk interest on loans of Cooperative Bank amounting to Rs170 million. However, the poor defaulters could not get full benefit of it because of lack of some proper publicity and internal problems of the cooperative department.

The meeting also decided to hold another high-level meeting under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani to resolve the problem of giving golden handshake and pension to the Cooperatives Bank employees as well as empowering the Bank of Khyber to provide small credit to the farmers.