Op­po­si­tion leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is urg­ing the bank­ing com­mu­ni­ty to re­con­sid­er hav­ing the pub­lic as well as mi­cro and small busi­ness op­er­a­tors forcibly use Au­to­mat­ed Teller Ma­chines (ATM) for fi­nan­cial de­posits.

In a news re­lease on Fri­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said re­cent­ly, lo­cal com­mer­cial banks have late­ly been di­rect­ing many trans­ac­tions to ATMs, and while this may be a stan­dard prac­tice in oth­er parts of the world, in T&T, un­der the cur­rent crime surge, this process leaves clients vul­ner­a­ble to bru­tal crim­i­nals.

“Since there are fi­nan­cial lim­its on each de­posit trans­ac­tion, a sin­gle cus­tomer could spend sev­er­al min­utes at an ATM ma­chine, lead­ing to long lines that quick­ly grow, leav­ing bank­ing cus­tomers stand­ing on the street with cash on their per­son for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods of time,” ac­cord­ing to the op­po­si­tion leader.

She not­ed that the sit­u­a­tion of bank cus­tomers stand­ing on the street with cash oc­curs in an en­vi­ron­ment where sev­er­al cus­tomers have been as­sault­ed and robbed—even killed–af­ter pa­tro­n­is­ing banks at all lev­els.

She re­called that on­ly a few weeks ago, an on-du­ty se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer was mur­dered while on du­ty at an ATM at Cunu­pia.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so point­ed out that there have been oth­er in­stances of armed se­cu­ri­ty guards be­ing am­bushed and at­tacked while trans­fer­ring mon­ey.

“Small busi­ness women and men are much more de­fence­less than armed se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers in the cur­rent at­mos­phere of ram­pant law­less­ness, es­pe­cial­ly un­der a gov­ern­ment that has all but giv­en up on ad­dress­ing the vi­o­lent crime cri­sis cit­i­zens are fac­ing to­day.

“I strong­ly rec­om­mend that the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion (BATT) crit­i­cal­ly re­view the di­ver­sion of de­posit trans­ac­tions to ATMs and work to­ward cre­at­ing the safest set­ting for its clients,” she said.

In a state­ment on its web­site on Ju­ly 13, 2023, BATT said it ac­knowl­edged with great con­cern the in­creased risk be­ing faced by clients be­fore and af­ter they vis­it its branch­es and ATMs. The in­crease in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty is of as much con­cern to BATT as it is for our val­ued clients.

“In an ef­fort to com­bat the uptick in these crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, BATT has strength­ened its co­or­di­na­tion ef­fort among all banks; broad­ened the in­ter­ac­tion with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice; and is fi­nal­is­ing a part­ner­ship with Crime Stop­pers Trinidad and To­ba­go Ltd with a view to mit­i­gat­ing and or man­ag­ing in­ci­dents of this na­ture col­lec­tive­ly and ex­pe­di­tious­ly,” said BATT

The pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tion as­sured its cus­tomers that their safe­ty re­mained a pri­ma­ry con­cern of BATT “and while we en­cour­age clients to make greater use of our non-cash ser­vice op­tions, we are com­mit­ted to do­ing what we can to pro­vide a safe en­vi­ron­ment for clients who choose to avail of our cash ser­vices.”