TIRUCHY: Employees of Cooperative Societies across the region staged a protest on Tuesday demanding to fill vacancies and asking the officials to stop forcing them to purchase certain machineries, including harvester machines, drones and load vehicles, which are lying idle on the societies premises.

According to the protesting members, while there are 18,000 employees required for the Cooperative societies across the state, there are only 7,000 employees on roll. They said there are as many as 4,500 societies, including 4,350 Primary Agriculture Cooperative Credit Societies functioning in the state and most of the societies are running without proper eligible secretaries.

Meanwhile, the officials force the societies to purchase certain agriculture equipment, including tractor, harvester, sugarcane harvester, drones, lorries and mini load vehicles under the infrastructure fund for the multipurpose service centres in all the societies. Almost all these equipment are lying idle on the society premises and so the officials should stop forcing the societies to purchase the equipment, which do not serve any purpose, they said.

“With the purchase of equipment, every society is facing an extra burden of Rs 50,000 per month and we have been appealing to the officials to stop ordering us to purchase equipment compulsorily. If our demands are not fulfilled, we will intensify the protest by availing long leave which would certainly affect the distribution of fertilizers and other farm requirements,” said Kaliyamurthy, district president of Cooperative Societies Employees Union, who led the protest in Thanjavur.