ATMs across India have begun to run dry from Tuesday morning and from what it seems, Pune hasn’t been spared the agony of this cash crunch. While the finance ministry and the RBI have issues statements indicating this as a one-off temporary shortage, the common citizen is outraged by this banking inefficiency.
While it hasn’t reached the ‘serpentine queue’ days of post demonetisation, the city certainly seems wary of the prospect of going back to that era.
We spoke to citizens and bank officials to check on the impact and the steps being taken to remedy this:
Kiran Salve, a digital media professional said “that he has to travel to 4-5 ATMs to withdraw money. The city has been facing a cash crunch off and on since demonization, also the currency capacity in the ATM have been downgraded in terms of volume of notes.”
Withdrawing money from the atm is the biggest task in the city. Banks are no better, with long queues outside banks. Once you reach the counter, they often do not allow you to withdraw if it is not your home branch.
The only solution to the ongoing problem is the availability of more money and a thorough check on ATM booths across the city. People have been waiting for several hours to withdraw the cash from the atm,” he adds.
“The cash crunch is not a new thing in the city, the ATMs in the city need to be upgraded,” says Sakshi Singh, a student.
It is very difficult to manage in the city, the city holds the highest student population. Imagine how inconvenient it is to manage when ATMs are out of cash, they’re either closed or else they have some technical issue.
“Despite trying several ATMs in the city, I wasn’t able to withdraw cash till evening. Although cards and Paytm works at most of the places but bus conductors, and grocery guy doesn’t use both,” she adds.
Snehal Surve, Fashion designer says, “I have to go street shopping as part of my work, every alternate day and even after carrying enough money, often I run out of cash. Most often, I have to travel quite a distance to be able to find an ATM that I can withdraw from.
The ATMs near the main markets are always out of order. Secondly, the availability of ATMs in the city does not match the need. It is either all or one road, or no where around. And the city has huge traffic snarls making it worse!
“Cashless India doesn’t mean cashless ATM,” says Rohan Betai, Sales professional.
We are still on our rounds to withdraw money from the ATMs, we had no clue about the temporary shortage of cash. We have always welcomed the government moves, be it demonetisation or anything else, though I don’t think the government is doing justice to our needs.
All of us were caught unaware of this impending cash crunch. ATM’s shut and quite a few places also started refusing to accept cards, probably since they all needed cash in hand.
“Is this really our achhe din?” Rohan quips.
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#All views expressed in this article are those of the individual respondents and Pune365 does not necessarily subscribe to them.
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