By Damilola Akinlotan
Few weeks after the release of old notes to the banks, the much expected relief to the average common man is yet to be seen.
This is as, the cash crunch crisis still lingers and the people of Ekiti State don’t seem to find it funny.
Our correspondent who monitored some banks in the busy Bank Road along new Iyin Ado Ekiti reports a mixed reactions from people interviewed.
Most bank customers at the UBA ATM machine at the weekend lamented how the cash crunch has been affecting them.
According to Mr. Akani Oladele Oluwapelumi “The cash crunch has not be going well for me, there is a lot of stress and transferring from my own account is hell. Banks ICT is not functioning well generally and I don’t think they have the capacity to handlie the huge traffic congestion that made money transfer from bank to another bank has become so problematic”.
He said he encountered one issue some days ago when he went to get goods in a store and he did transfer, he was debited and the woman was not credited before the money was reversed back to him was after three days.
The maximum amount he collected from the bank was ten thousand naira on the counter and spent two hours on the queue.
Speaking on the low deposit recorded by banks in recent time, Mr Oluwapelumi said it is better to keep the cash you have with you than going to the bank to deposit your money because if you deposit your money in the bank to withdraw it back is hell both in bank and the POS.
Another respondent, Mr. Tijani Saheed Olajide, a business Man said “The cash crunch has not being favorable to me at all and my business has suffered a lot Some of my customers who did transfer to me for the past two months the money is still hanging as I’ve not been credited till now”
He said a bank staff came to buy something in his store for the past three weeks now, the staff who is his customer did transfer to him and he is yet to receive it. the cash crunch has been wasting his time because the time he should use for business he is using it in bank and he could wait in bank for three hours and might not still be able to get money, the network for transfer has not been smooth that make it seems there is no any improvement in the cash crunch.
He however claimed that the only improvement is that people can now enter banks and the queue in banks has reduced.
” POS are till giving us problem because they are the ones who queue most in banks”.
He said most of them have more than five ATM cards that they bring to the ATM stand and they will make sure they use all the ATM cards with them to withdraw before they leave which will not give other people chance to withdraw from the ATM machine and once they get to their Shops, they will still sell out the money to the public.
“You can now withdraw from ten thousand naira to forty thousand naira”.
Mr. Frank Ogwezi said in a separate interview that the cash crunch is a general problem and not convineniet at all. He said there has been great improvement both in network issue and customer service compared to few weeks ago.
He also said the past three weeks, he has not been using the ATM machine because of the queue but as at yesterday, he got ten thousand naira at the counter after spending up to an hour. He said: “For you to deposit money in the bank, that means you have more than enough cash with you, he also said he personally cannot go to bank to deposit money and when he want to collect money from anybody, he will tell them to give him cash than sending the money to his bank account.
Miss. Omoniyi Oluwapelumi said the cash crunch is not really affecting her because she works in a Micro Finance bank. She said most times she get twenty to fifty thousand from the counter and spent like thirty minutes on the queues before she will be attended to.
According to her, there is a lot of improvement in banks compare to election period where some people spend more than five hours in bank. Miss. Adeleke Okikiola said she has been on the queue for about two hours but unable to get money. That when it get to her turn to withdraw, the ATM will stop dispensing.
Mrs. Omoyeni Marvelous a business woman said in her conversation that “the cash crush as been affecting my business for some weeks now. Almost all my customers have been doing transfer to me and most of the transfer will be successful and i will not receive the alert till after few days”. There was a time I stopped accepting transfer from my customers which made it difficult to make sales. There is a little changes compared to some weeks ago when there was no cash at all but now we can all go to any bank of our choice and withdraw cash, the bank might not give us the enough cash we need for our business but at least I still got up to fifty thousand naira from the counter twice this week.
“The queue in banks too has reduced compared to last month I still spend up to thirty minutes to one hour in the bank. I do not I think I can deposit money in bank for now because I will not want a situation whereby what happened few weeks ago will happen again. I would rather keep my cash with me than to deposit them in bank.
