TRANG -- A group of Huai Yot district residents have cried foul being unable to withdraw money from a long-running, community-based financial institute.
About 40 Ban Nai Tao villagers on Wednesday lodged a complaint with Huai Yot police station, saying the Ban Nai Tao fund had no money left in its coffers when they tried to withdraw cash for upcoming school expenses.
Klan Thongphoon told police group members had been depositing their savings with the local cooperative to finance education for their children for the past two years. During that time they had never taken loans or withdrawn cash from the fund, Daily News Online reported.
But when they tried to make withdrawals this week, they were told by the institute's directors that the fund had run dry due to bad loans stemming from falling prices of rubber, the district's main cash crop.
The co-op had not set aside any money for customers who wanted to withdraw cash for educational purposes, the complainants said.
The locals believed the fund's liquidity problems stemmed from lending policies that allowed loans of up to 10 times the principal invested in the fund.
The Ban Nai Tao co-op, founded on Jan 10, 1995, has more 500 members. It had about 40 million baht in circulation, most of which came from cash deposits by residents and sale of shares at 100 baht each.