Fuad Boqari, chairman of the board of directors of the Government Employees Cooperative Society, said investors have always opposed cooperatives, and that there are 2,000 cooperative housing societies in Egypt compared to only one in the Kingdom.

In relation to this, a member of the audience said housing societies will not succeed unless they receive support and are protected.

“Cooperative societies are more successful in villages than in cities,” said Boqari, adding that people who live in villages are often related. “When a person cooperates, he is doing it in the end for a relative,” he said.

Cooperative societies, explained Boqari, do not meet the ambition and needs of members of these societies. “There is a lot of bureaucracy and this restricts the establishment of societies,” he said.

On Monday, specialists at the forum said that media organizations blame cooperative societies for providing them with too few newsworthy stories. They added that news relating to cooperative societies are either not important or staff working at these organizations do not contact newspapers to help them develop stories.

The members and heads of cooperative societies in rural areas complained that regional reporters do not report on them and that if they contact newspapers they are often told to send press releases.

A member of a cooperative society in Madinah complained that reporters tend to write negative stories about such organizations, forcing them to write and send press releases instead.

Jamal Khashoggi, a former editor in chief of Al-Watan newspaper, as well as columnist Hashim Al-Jahdali, spoke at a lecture that addressed the role and relationship between the media and cooperative societies.

The forum also called for the need to train and employ young Saudis in cooperative societies and to send staff abroad to get more experience.