KARACHI, Sept 1: The Sindh Cabinet on Wednesday offered to waive off Rs711.2 million interest outstanding against defaulting cooperative societies if they pay back only the principal by Dec 31st.

The offer is conditional to the cut-off date, after which legal proceedings would be initiated to recover the entire amount with interest, Finance Minister Syed Sardar Ahmad told Dawn.

The decision was taken at a cabinet meeting held at the New Sindh Secretariat with Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim in the chair. Mr Sardar Ahmad said the offer had been made because attempts to recover the principal amount with interest had failed to yield results.

He said the defaulting societies were from the agricultural sector, numbering 672. An amount of Rs1125.81 million was outstanding against them. The principal amount is Rs414.61 million.

Another important decision taken by the cabinet was to set up a Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education in Mirpurkhas to cover districts of Mirpurkhas, Badin and Sanghar.

The cabinet, he said, took exception to formation of 32 committees by the Planning Commission to help prepare a new five-year plan for 2005-2010 without consulting the provincial governments. The committees comprised retired and serving bureaucrats and only one MNA.

The cabinet asked the chief minister to take up the matter with the prime minister and ask him to nominate parliamentarians, agriculturalists, educationists, social scientists and functional groups of women development from Sindh to incorporate their views on different subjects in future planning.

Later, Information Adviser to the Chief Minister Salahuddin Haider gave details of the decisions in an official press release. It said that according to the paper presented by the finance minister there were total 2663 cooperative societies in the province and its largest concentration was in Karachi numbering 1067, followed by Hyderabad 392, Mirpurkhas 179, and Jacobabad 176.

Out of 1032 housing cooperative societies, there were 833 in Karachi, followed by Hyderabad 134 and Sukkur 25. Besides agricultural and housing societies there were 116 credit societies, 79 farming societies.

The cabinet appreciated a suggestion made by the chief minister to set up micro-credit banks for offering loans to cooperative societies in rural areas. Regarding decision to set up an ISBE in Mirpurkhas, Mr Haider said that necessary legislation and the charter of the new board would soon be completed.

The Cabinet asked the law and education secretaries to jointly prepare stricter punishments to curb the menace of cheating and other malpractices in examinations. The cabinet demanded compensation from the NWFP government for the death of two Range Forest Officers from Sindh in Shogran during training. The Adviser for Forestry, Syed Ijaz Ali Shirazi, informed the cabinet that he had already appointed an officer to report on the matter.