Vijayawada: Thursday was a day of unprecedented rush at banks for exchange currency notes. There was high security at all branches and other financial establishments.
Meanwhile, only a few post offices had provisions to distribute new currency notes. Long queues were seen at bank branches across Vijayawada and Krishna districts with people queuing up even before the banks opened. While there was a lot of curiosity about the new notes, problems arose when they could not get change for them in the market.
A. Aruna, an entrepreneur, said, “I came to the bank at around 10 in the morning and since then I am running from one counter to the other completing formalities; the staff is cooperating but it is taking too much time for depositing money as well as exchanging money.”
In Vijayawada there were no queues at post offices though the government had announced that new currency notes would be available at all post offices. The postal department couldn’t even support regular customers as the government didn’t come up with a mechanism to make the new notes available.
Senior postmaster Amara Jyothi said, “As ours is a single person post office, it is not possible for us to go to the bank and get new currency notes.”
