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"id": 1046261,
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"speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Zani",
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"legal_name": "Agnes Zani",
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"content": "show that they are a co-operative society. They must hand in the minutes and also hand in their governing authorities. The Co-operative Societies Act is one of the Acts which if you read through, is very extensive. As we know, so far, this is the Act that is used for many of the co- operative societies that are in place. We have a regulatory system which is the Sacco Societies Regulatory Authority (SASRA), but that regulatory system is also an authority that regulates what is meant to be put in by the Act. The Act itself, so far, is a regulator for many of the co-operative societies, but the authority is playing a more important role in ensuring the specific processes of the particular Act. Part 4 talks about the privileges of the registered society and Part 5 talks about rights and liabilities of members, qualification of members, members of the co-operative society, voting rights, transfer of shares, and rights of members. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, Part 6 includes duties of the co-operative society, and registration address of the co-operative society. This is because you could have a society that does not have an address and people do not know where to find it. Such issues have already been addressed. Estimates of income and expenditure have to be very well known and very transparent. Account and audit production of books and other documents et cetera. At various levels of the Act, various issues are addressed. Rights and obligations of the co-operative society, property and funds of co-operative societies, charges of co- operative societies, inquiry and inspection, dissolution of the society, settlements of disputes et cetera. This Bill, in a systematic way, moves on to address each of the various aspects in terms of amending that Act. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, allow me to go through it clause by clause. In the main Act, what we have is only a commissioner who is in charge of running co-operative societies but this Bill wants to introduce the whole aspect of having the CEC Members. For example, Clause 2 amends the Co-operative Societies Act, also referred to as the Principal Act in the definition of the word “co-operative society” by inserting the words “and includes a provisional registered co-operative society”. Therefore, this Bill also introduces that when a society is provisionally registered, then the rules also apply to it, immediately after the words in Section 4. It deletes “a Minister” and instead of “a Minister”, and replaced it with “a Cabinet Secretary”. This is aligning the Act, so that it is in line with the new Constitution. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, at one point, Sen. (Dr.) Milgo also had parallel amendments to the Co-operative Societies Act. However, we had a meeting at pre- publication stage for this particular Bill in the Committee on Tourism, Trade and Industrialization. We looked at it and were able to differentiate exactly what she was looking out for and what I was looking out for. What Sen. (Dr.) Milgo was looking out for was to amend the Act in terms of the provisions and aligning the terminologies across every stage of that Act to be in line with what is now the new thing that we are doing. In this particular Act, we are trying to make that division, so that we have a system where on one hand, we have the running parallel of the Bill - at the moment - The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}