Kurnool: Fifty days after demonetisation, the woes of bank customers are still continuing without any let up. On November 8, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi withdrew the legal tender nature of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, little did the hapless customers understand its implications.
Kurnool district witnessed death in queue lines before bank counters. A 70-year-old pensioner collapsed before Andhra Bank in Dhone while a retired veterinary employee lost his life at Nandikotkur. The district also witnessed irate bank customers locking up bank branches at Yemmiganur, Peapully, and Mantralayam.
It is a familiar sight in Kurnool city where people are braving the biting chill, waiting outside ATMs to draw cash. While some stood in queue by taking permission from their work places, there were others too who took leave to draw cash. A widespread resentment was witnessed among the public in the last 50 days in Kurnool district.
Even on Day 50, on Wednesday, a woman fainted in a queue before Andhra Bank in Yemmiganur. In Koilkuntla, chappals replaced tired bank customers to proxy for their presence before an ATM near SBI.
Though the queues have reduced in the banks for deposit of scrapped currency, customers are forming lines for withdrawal of cash from their accounts.
Bankers are unable to dispense the required money. Deputy general manager of Andhra Bank Gopalakrishna said that they do not have sufficient cash flow from the RBI for fulfilling the needs of their customers.
People are unable to get cash from the ATMs as 95 per cent of ATMs are kept closed for ‘No Cash’ and some of them pull down shutters within 3-4 hours of loading the cash.
Employees fear the spectre of a new month, which also happens to be the New Year. What with no cash either in ATMs or in their pockets, these people worry about meeting daily expenses and settling payments.
Being the first days of the month, many have to settle accounts of rent, milk, vegetables and retail purchases. Some house owners live on rents they get and cannot wait for long to get the money from their tenants. They should also pay their customers for their daily needs, M. Venkata Ramana from Old Kallur area in the city said. He gets the salary on the 5th of every month and on the same day, he has to monthly bills of several people. Women are facing hardships in maintaining stock of the essentials due to cash crunch, he added.
P. Narayana Reddy, a professor, said that debit/credit cards are not the solutions to cash crunch in many transactions. Daily wages of an unskilled or semi-skilled worker, retail purchases from a street vendor or even vegetables in wholesale markets in many places cannot be done in anything but cash and there is the additional cost of precious time lost queuing up at banks for withdrawal of currency, he said.
Around 445 banks function in Kurnool district. These banks are unable to meet the needs of the public as one bank is needed for every 5,000 people. Of the 40 lakh population in the district, 30,000 are government employees and more than 5 lakh are from private sector and all these employees draw salaries from banks.
The government has made it mandatory to draw pensions through banks. This procedure is annoying the pensioners in villages. Around Rs 500 crore is being disbursed to 3.10 lakh pensioners (old age, widow and disabled) in the district every month. Many of them do not have bank accounts and those having accounts are finding it difficult with the lengthy queues.
