MAZABUKA RESIDENTS PLEAD WITH BANK OF ZAMBIA….’ALLOW ONO AND COMSAVE MEMBERS TO GRADUATE THEIR CURRENT MEMBERS’
Dear Editor,
APPEAL LETTER TO THE BANK OF ZAMBIA
We write to you following up on the abrupt unnoticeable freezing of COMSAVE and ONO cooperatives- credit unions’ banking accounts as well as halting members’ businesses. As a financial regulatory body, we hold you in very high esteem to provide and give direction to all financial institutions in our country and provide guidance regarding the economy as you have always done from inception.
In this vain, we the membership of Ono and Comsave respectively wish to indicate to you that we are optimistic that the ongoing investigations against the credit unions by DEC and BOZ will be conducted with an open mind and in a spirit devoid of deceit, from any party involved.
We wish to inform you that as a community and as members of these institutions, when the government encouraged initiatives such as village banking aimed at empowering women and youths and subsequent official encouragements from our local government leadership (DC-Mazabuka and PS-Southern Province) to join a credit union initiatives, to be specific Ono and Comsave in this instance to be specific, we could not hesitate to joining the initiatives more so that the two institutions are duly registered with the relevant government authorities and have never defaulted in terms of their obligation to pay out to their members from the time they started their operations.
As regards investigations, we are consoled to learn from informal sources that your esteemed institution has the interests of the members that have saved their funds with ONO/COMSAVE in order to raise funds for various economic activities such as for farming, school/university fees, etc.
However, the disruption of their ( Comsave and Ono )activities due to the ongoing investigations has created anxiety and panic among the entire membership who now do not know what next, where next will the money for livelihood will come from, money for farming inputs for 2020/21 season, later on, school/college fees for University students.
We are hopeful that soon these investigations will be concluded as quickly as possible and that the central bank will pronounce itself on this matter bearing in mind that many lives are in limbo starting from the investors themselves, their children, and dependants school-going children etc.
Our considered view and prayer is that if there is any law that has been contravened by the two institution.
1.We urge you not be punitive but rather embrace the initiative by ONO and COMSAVE and help them by offering neccesary guidance…Remember we can only develop this nation together with homegrown initiatives like these ones…
With your technical support, perhaps one can graduate into them cooperative banks which would be owned by Zambian citizens (the members). Most commercial banks in our nation are foreign banks. Can’t we as a nation provide an enabling environment for local participation and growth of local financial market?
- If it is licences or certifications they are lacking , can’t you guide them on the necessary documentations and the frame from within which they need to operate.
- If allowing them to participate in the financial market is not attainable, as a smooth and simpler way of meeting the needs of members, BOZ should let these two institutions take up no new members and allow them to “graduate” their current membership till the last one group is paid…. that is by July 2021.
In all this, please be alive to the fact that government officials (DC-Mazabuka and PS-Southern Province) in the past have urged the community members to join Ono and comsave as they graced some of the “graduation” ceremonies of members who saved with the two organizations. ONO and COMSAVE have always engaged state security all the time they have been doing business, they are engaged in community service such as feeding and paying school fees for willing street kids. These above are good pointers for a layman not to suspect any illegality in the institutions
Yours,
Mazabuka Residents