The automation in banking transactions in the Brahmapur Bazar branch of the State Bank of India at Annapurna Market is found in a state of mess.
Each of the more than 50 customers who reached the SBI evening branch just at 12 noon on Thursday for deposit and withdrawal of money from their respective accounts had to wait for half an hour for their turn to come.
The duration of each transaction was left to the mercy of the computer to respond. Though the assistants were present at their respective counters to transact business, they were found helpless as there was no one to coordinate or manage the affairs on the floor.
Most of the computers are reportedly obsolete and frequently go defunct. Messages like “server is down”, “machine is hanged”, “access is ceased or restricted” and “no network” are the common answers given to the customers almost every day.
It was observed that when customers were in a long queue at Counter No. 8, the assistant in charge of the counter was helplessly moving from post to pillar to seek technical assistance from someone who could help him bring the computer to order, but in vain. Ironically, the representative of the concerned firm to which the SBI has reportedly given AMC was present but was without any effective solution to the problem.
The bank seems to have adhered to some faulty procedures. For instance, after remaining in queue for half an hour, a customer who withdraws money from one counter is often directed by the concerned assistant to go to another counter for updating the passbook where the customer again has to stand in a queue waiting for his turn to come. It is a double punishment to the customers which the SBI higher authorities should take cognizance, say customers. Similarly, there is not separate counter for senior citizens and women customers.
One of the senior citizens who had to wait before a counter for his turn commented, “SBI is just like a cycle without oil.” Another aggrieved customer, RK Panda, who was waiting for half an hour for his turn but in vain, said, “The manual system was better than automation.”
When a customer wanted to know the reason for such frequent malfunctioning of computers in this branch, an insider said the branch manager should move around different work stations at regular intervals to take stock of the situation on an hourly basis. Mere sitting in the room and issuing directions does not hold good. It is the lack effective floor management and coordination which has brought the routine work to such a messy state.
There is a strong public perception that if the concerned computer firm is not able to identify the technical glitches and fails to provide prompt service, why the bank is not recommending the bank’s head office to change the firm.
When this reporter wanted to know the reason why most of the computers and printers often become defunct, Branch Manager Akshay Kumar Mohapatra initially said he has not received any such complain from the concerned staff and tried to shift the responsibility to the staff on duty stating that due to the delay in logging the machine, the response time of the computer gets late.
Reacting to his statement, the assistant of the concerned counter said he had logged on the machine right from 11.30 am but the computer was not responding and the computer is more than five years old.
A businessman, who was losing patience for the long wait, said that if a customer stands in a queue for hours for a single transaction then the very purpose of making the transactions automated gets defeated. Another customer demanded that all the computers and printers that are five years old be replaced with new machines.
There is a public perception that the SBI should appoint two regular and fulltime system administrators having expertise in computer systems, one in hardware and the other in software, in each branch to overcome such problems and make the bank customer-centric.