THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Krishnan Nair sat behind the help desk of the main branch of State Bank of Travancore as he could not find a seat at the lobby of the spacious bank near the Secretariat.
The retired Corporation employee had come all the way from his home at Neyyattinkara to withdraw his pension. “I have been waiting for an hour for my turn. What I hear from other customers is that I may have to go back with a bunch of Rs 2,000 notes. Shortage of small change is an issue. It is not easy to spend it at my home town, though provision and medical stores have started accepting it,” said Nair.
The lobby at the bank is quite packed despite multiple counters opened there to ease the rush. The SBT branch is a popular one for many government officials, both retired and serving.
Due to location advantage many of them drop in during office hours to withdraw their salaries within the limit imposed by the Reserve Bank. “Footfalls to the branch have more than doubled due to restriction on withdrawal from ATM.
We have opened more counters after salary day to meet the demand,” said a senior official of the bank. The branch maintains five ATMs and adequate cash has been kept in the machines, she said. But she admitted that shortage of smaller denomination currency notes are creating problems for the staff.
“Most customers want small change for Rs 24,000 withdrawn from the branch. Some of them create noise if we give then Rs 2,000 note. We are giving Rs 500 notes only through ATMs,” said the official. According to her, the number of people taking up internet banking, point of sale machines etc have increased post demonetisation.