It was a Friday fright for a large number of money seekers who thronged every possible ATM in the State, only to find most of them non-operational, even though it had been announced that cash kiosks would start dispensing paper money after officially remaining closed for previous two days.
Anxious customers were seen rushing to banks to such an extent that security guards were seen stopping more people from entering, as the premises were already too crowded. This caught everyone off-guard as people were expecting things to improve, but that was not to be.
Rakesh Junagade, a resident of Thane in Maharashtra, spent half his day in Panaji to find which ATM had cash. He said, “I didn’t expect to spend my vacation this way. I have now put my brother on the job to look out for ATM which has money."HDFC Bank’s ATM at 18th June Road had cash throughout the day and as a result saw a long queue of people waiting to withdraw money. Sources informed that this ATM became operational at 6 in the morning.
But, clearly, this was an exception, as ATMs of prominent banks like Axis Bank, Corporation Bank, Canara Bank in Panaji kept their shutters down. Interestingly, it was the software issue with ATMs which resulted in the problem and not so much the lack of cash.
A source, who didn’t wish to be named, said, “Vendors manage ATMs, they withdraw and load cash in these machines. I think ATMs have a software issue because we have a new Rs 2,000 note. Unless this issue is sorted, we can’t withdraw old notes and load new notes.”
Some banks have managed to sort out this issue with their vendors and hence their ATMs could function. But, overall, things were more chaotic on Friday than on Thursday.
Augusto Valio, a Goan staying in Portugal, said, “There are so many people in bank-branch that we can’t even enter. We can withdraw Rs 4,000 per day, but that’s not really sufficient. We are literally starving as we have no money.”
Meanwhile, per person per day withdrawal limit is Rs 2,000 from ATM, which most people think is too low. During all this chaos, banks were trying to replace old currency notes with new currency notes.
An official from HDFC Bank’s Caranzalem branch, said, “We have withdrawn old Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes from our ATM and we are expecting new currency notes to be in by 4:30 pm.”
ICICI Bank’s ATM on D.B. Road didn’t have cash in the morning, but later got the cash, which too was withdrawn very soon and the bank again had to shut the ATM.
Syndicate Bank’s ATM at DB Road had cash in the first half of the day, but soon ran out of it. As the day progressed, the situation got worsened. Earlier in the day, the staff at many banks assured anxious customers that there would be cash in ATMs by afternoon time, but that didn’t happen and the queues kept on getting longer. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRIDAY FRUSTRATION
* Friday turned out to be even worse than Thursday for people seeking to withdraw money
* Most ATMs remained shut in the capital city and suburbs, blame it on the software issue
* Dejected customers had nowhere to go but scramble yet again to banks for money
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HOW CASH IS DISTRIBUTED
* SBI, Bank of India, Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda and ICICI Bank have the responsibility of distributing the currency to all other banks in Goa region
* These five banks get currency as and when they need in something called “currency chest” from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)
* From these currency chests, currency is distributed by these banks on regular basis to other banks like HDFC Bank, Punjab National Bank, Axis Bank and others
* These five banks distribute cash to even co-operative sector banks in the state
