CARIBBEAN-Guyana urged to update its cooperative sector legislation.

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – The programme director of the Caribbean Development Education (CaribDe), Melvin Edwards, said Monday that legislation governing Guyana’s cooperative sector was outdated and urged Georgetown to update the laws governing the sector.

“ So basically, an almost 80-year-old piece of legislation cannot be relevant to the present day. With the tremendous changes in standards, anti-money laundering, counter-terrorism financing, proliferation, the international financial reporting standards (IFRS), and credit union standards for prudential management, these need to be built in; they need to be embedded in the legislation,” Edwards told the opening of the training programme of the Caribbean credit union sector.

Edwards, who noted that the 1948 Cooperative Societies Act was outdated, appealed to Labour Minister Keoma Griffith to work with the local and regional credit union movements, as well as CaribDe, to modernise Guyana’s legislative framework for the cooperative sector, at a time when most Caribbean countries had already modernised their laws.

In response, Griffith said Guyana has been receiving technical assistance from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to conduct an “extensive review” of the Cooperative Societies Act.

He said the aim would be to strengthen the law, improve governance structures, and ensure greater accountability across the sector so that the cooperative movement could operate effectively within Guyana’s rapidly evolving economic landscape.

“We will continue to look at and examine all of the models and the development that has legislatively taken place to see how we can better serve the people of Guyana through the legislation,” said Griffith, noting that Guyana is also studying Jamaica’s cooperatives legislation.

But Griffith also registered the Guyana government’s concerns that segments of the cooperative sector were not being properly run and urged that those long-standing governance and accountability challenges be addressed.

“In some instances, cooperative societies have operated in ways that have undermined public (38:31) confidence and weakened the effectiveness of the movement,” he added.

Edwards said that the Caribbean credit union movement serves 2.8 million persons across the region, who have amassed US$3.5 billion.

“The point is ordinary people have been owning and building these credit unions, leading them, governing them, and managing them successfully to the point that it is causing quite a stir in the traditional for-profit banking sector. We don’t apologize for that,” he added.

Edwards also urged that there be unity in Guyana’s cooperative credit union movement and appealed to the secretary of the Guyana Cooperative Credit Union League, Colin Beaton and the chairman Guyana Public Service Cooperative Credit Union Ltd, Trevor Benn to mend their differences before the Caribbean Confederation of Credit Unions (CCCU) 2026 Annual International Convention and Annual General Meeting scheduled for June 19–24, 2026 in Barbados.

“So again, Mr. Beaton, again Chairman Ben, I appeal to you in the presence of our colleagues that whatever differences there are, we would like to see, we hope to see a united, unified Guyana movement. There will always be disagreements. I don’t believe in a movement splintered for younger leaders to take over.

“So I plead with you, whatever the difference is, don’t go back to CCCU in Barbados in June as a splintered movement. I speak plain English. Okay? That is the call of leadership,” Edwards added.

Benn did not address the call for an end to squabbling, but sought to assure attendees that the aim was to improve the credit union.

“We have made that our mantra, to make the organization better than we left it. We’ve made it better in that we have grown as a membership, an active member at this important juncture,” he said.

For his part, Beaton said efforts were being made to “resolve our little teething issues,” adding, “I trust by the next Caribbean forum, it will be resolved”.