THRISSUR: On the fifth working day on Monday after the demonetization of Rs 500/1,000 notes, the banks did not witness much decrease in the rush in Thrissur, but the panic was tapering off, bank officials said. An SBI state-level official told DC that the rush for exchange of scrapped notes with new ones had come down considerably and now more customers were turning up at branches for deposit and withdrawal through accounts. SBI top officials said that out of the 1,434 ATMs in Kerala, nearly 1,000 worked on Monday and all the Cash Deposit Machines (CDMs) were now operational.
In Kerala, all the 483 branches of SBI collected a remittance of Rs 4,000 crores in the four working days till Sunday and out of the total 18,200 branches across the country, Rs 80,000 crores were remitted by customers including loan payment. “We have noticed the trend of several loan defaulters coming up with whopping amounts mainly outside Kerala, which will be looked into later,” the officials added. He also said that the bank was expecting the new 500 currency reaching Kerala from the RBI minting unit at Mysore and they could be dispensed over the counters at banks and also at the ATMs.
Meanwhile, in Thrissur town, the e-lobby ATM of SBI near its head office in Naduvilal and the SBT main office near Paramekkavu temple, functioned all throughout the day as bank officials regularly filled the drained machines in a few minutes. Both the ATMs will function during the day time in the coming days as well, bank officials said. But most of the ATMs of Federal Bank, Punjab National Bank and Union Bank and that of private banks like ICICI, Axis and HDFC did not function at all on Monday.
