No respite for people from cash crunch

Nirmal: With just 3 days to go for depositing the banned Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes in banks, Bhainsa is still suffering with the crunch of cash in almost all the banks in the town.

It's been annoying to the people to get just Rs 2000 after a long wait in the queues at the bank. Many account holders have expressed their dissatisfaction as the banks have been behaving too miserly in issuing the currency notes.

Already, the market has been badly hit due to the cash crunch. Moreover, banks have not started issuing the new Rs 500 currency notes, citing lame excuses, thus compounding the miseries of the common man.

According to the instructions given by the Reserve Bank of India, the Rs 500 currency notes must be made available in the ATM centres but this did not happen.

There is just one ATM centre for the entire Bhainsa town with a population of 50,000and it operates only till 10.00 PM which forces people to throng in line in the early hours in the the biting cold of December.

Speaking to Hans India here on Tuesday, one of the account holders Shanker said, "I have been queuing up for the past four days in the bank waiting for my payment of crops,

and I get just Rs 2,000 a day which neither satisfies my daily needs nor helps me to meet the expenses incurred in the irrigation and other payments to be made".

People in the district fear that the cash crunch may not end in three days as promised earlier by the Union government and might spill over beyond December 30 as it is not easy to print crores of currency notes needed by the people in such a short time.

By: Sathyapu Srinivas Reddy