Demonetisation: Same situation, after months

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, February 23

Almost all ATMs in the district have been going dry for the past nearly one week. The situation is likely to aggravate due to three bank holidays from tomorrow.

Unable to provide cash to people, some banks have either preferred to lock down their ATMs or have displayed placards with messages of ‘no cash’. The situation is such that even if few ATMs get filled with cash by banks, it becomes dry within one to two hours. Among dozens of ATMs in the city, only two-three could be seen dispensing cash. Long queues are still seen outside ATMs, after months of demonetisation.

There has been no relief to residents from cash-crunch as a large number of them are also unaware of online banking system. There has also been no formal training from bank officials about the mobile banking or the online banking while customers still have to wait long to get his/her mobile banking started.

Many shopkeepers and local business stores are waiting for the POS (Point of Sale System) machines from long time, which has affected their business.

It’s noteworthy that recently, the government had allowed every customer to withdraw debit upto Rs 50,000 per week from saving account from bank or ATMs. However, despite claims of banks of making huge cash disbursement in ATMs, consumers do not get it in their hands. The government had also announced to remove all cash withdrawal limits from March 13, but cash still remains out of reach for most of the people.

Even many of the well-established shops in Dhobi Bazar and even shopping malls, do not have POS machines and this leaves all of us in lurch. The common man has learnt nothing about online or cashless banking while banks too need install more ATMs,” said Gurpreet Singh, a resident of Model Town.

Yuvinder Garg, a shop owner at Kapda market, said, “We are getting a double blow. There is downfall in number of customers and secondly we are not getting POS machines from banks. Our business is suffering badly only because of lack of cash with people and lack of machines with us. A number of farmers generally visit us as they are our main customers, but they don’t know online banking system. They bring cheques but we find it difficult to get cash as many of the cheques are undersigned with thumb.”

“During holidays the banks remain closed while ATMs shut down and as a consequence, long queues are witnessed in banks after state or national holidays,” said Ramandeep Kaur, resident of Hazura Kapura colony.

Sandeep Gupta, manager at SBOP branch in SSD Girls College, said, “Our ATM remained opened for nearly four hours after we filled it with notes worth Rs 9 lakh today. Later, we shut it down. We are getting Rs 5 to 10 lakh cash for disbursement every day. There are number of customers who had applied for POS machines but the work is pending. In our bank, nearly 10 POS machines have been disbursed while 20 others orders are in line since a month. These machines are provided by the bank free of cost but monthly charges are taken from customers using these machines.”