PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad-This country’s credit unions are protesting a government proposal that would give the country’s Central Bank oversight over CUs. The Trinidad Express Newspapers reported that the president of the Cooperative Credit Union League, Joseph Remy, said his association is opposed to the measure, and quoted Remy as calling the proposal “disrespectful” to CUs.
“We should amend the Co-operative Societies Act,” the newspaper quoted Remy as saying. “Allow the Commissioner (for Co-operative Development) office the regulations of the credit unions. If you allow credit unions to be regulated under the Central Bank, then the whole ethos of what credit unions represent, the whole philosophy of our ownership and our shareholding democracy, is going to be destroyed. No longer would we be in charge of our own economic destiny. The day that we allow this bill to be implemented it is going to see the destruction of one of the fundamental pillars of the people’s sector.”