Pensioners accuse bank of not following SBP policy

JHANG: Senior citizens, including pensioners and local businessmen, on Friday appealed to the authorities to take notice of installation of a new ATM on the premises of the regional office, allegedly to facilitate the office staff instead of serving the bank’s customers.

They alleged that instead of replacing the frequently malfunctioning ATM at the Community Centre branch, the decision to install a new machine in a residential area was against the interests of the citizens.

They pointed out that the State Bank of Pakistan had implemented a policy exempting pensioners from biometric verification due to issues with unreadable thumb impressions.

The bank manager was duty-bound to accept life certificates, particularly from sick female pensioners, before processing their payments, they added.However, instead of facilitating the old persons, the bank officials had started forcing them to appear in person at the government payment section. A retired banker believed that on receiving a cheque for pension payment should be sufficient for life verification by the branch manager.

However, no one was willing to facilitate the helpless elderly pensioners, who could be seen wandering around the Community Centre branch for a biometric verification issue, he added. The pensioners standing outside the bank told The News that they were being treated as second class citizens as armed guards were preventing them from entering the bank under the pretext that the system link was down.

A retired teacher and pensioner remarked that the bankers sitting in air conditioned offices seemed to forget that the teachers had once educated them to reach such positions.

The News tried to get a point of view from the Chief Manager of the State Bank of Pakistan in Faridabad regarding district-level monitoring of banks, but the operator told that he was in an urgent meeting.

However, when contacted at the NBP Regional Office regarding pensioners’ grievances and the ATM issue, a senior officer from the operations section told The News that the new ATM was installed at an approved site as it was specifically purchased by the head office for the RM office.

He added that new software for pensioner biometric verification had been implemented at the Community Centre and other branches and that staff had been accommodating pensioners. He told that all operation managers of the branches had already been instructed to facilitate senior citizens, including pensioners, with due respect.