Kathmandu, Aug. 4 -- The government has begun returning savings to depositors of officially declared troubled cooperatives since mid-May, offering long-awaited relief to thousands of victims. Yet the move has done little to address the plight of depositors whose money remains trapped in hundreds of other crisis-hit cooperatives that have not been formally declared as "troubled" by the authorities.

Although the government has prioritised deposit refunds through the Problematic Cooperatives Management Committee for institutions formally declared troubled, victims and experts say the policy excludes a far larger number of cooperatives that have collapsed, whose operators have disappeared and whose members have been protesting for years with...