Aimed at eradicating ‘financial untouchability’ byproviding bank accounts to the poor, Jan Dhan Yojana was started but implementing the scheme in haste has created heaps of confusion and mismanagement which could be witnessed in the banks across the city.
The bank employees were pushed to complete their targets at the start of the scheme and are still in a state of confusion regarding details of benefits through the account.
In the city, several banks and kiosks have run out of account opening forms and at several places lack of information is creating chaotic scenes. Customers who have opened their accounts earlier were fortunate as they were able to open accounts at any bank but now customers have been assigned banks according to their wards and they could be able to open account in that bank only.
When senior officials of banks were contacted they shied away from the question, but few provided the same old answer that new things take time to settle. Although they were also not able to provide accurate details and evaded the questions by providing excuse that for the clarity it would take more time.
Interestingly, for the same account, employees of different banks could be witnessed providing different information.
Suresh Thakur, who works as a manager at SBI Kiosks said that there were no circular about the insurance part. “The biggest problem we are facing is that the kiosk is flooded with enquiry and we are not able to deal with such a huge number of people coming with different queries,” he added.
Vijay Saxena, an employee with Andhra Bank said that normal functioning of the bank was earlier disturbed as huge number of customers was witnessed, but the accounts of first time visitors were opened. later, the customers have been distributed to the banks ward-wise. “Factually, the design of the process in the scheme is faulty. The authorities need to streamline the whole process, so that the banks may follow that accordingly,” he added. He informed that he had a target of opening 200 accounts in two days of launching the scheme and it was successfully completed.
An interesting fact was revealed by Saxena that after the circulars regarding the accounts would be issued in the coming days whatever the set of conditions and eligibilities would be applicable have to be imposed and it is possible that it may lead to even closure of accounts of customers.
Rukmani Bai, an aspirant for opening a bank account reached the kiosks with documents but was refused by bank as the account opening forms were not available in the bank. Earlier around two days ago she enquired regarding the account opening procedure and returned with the required documents but all in vain.