IT is now endemic, for more than two decades this nation has been plagued by a spate of ‘trail and rob’ following withdrawals from commercial banks. Many have lost their lives fetching around (literally) bags of money.
There are many theories why this form of criminal enterprise continues to flourish; public speculation and police investigations have pointed to several angles: there is a signalling mechanism between criminals and some bank employees; relatives, friends, employees or business partners with knowledge of the transaction may recruit criminals for a share of the bounty, or simply a random lay-in-wait. It is virtually impossible for the police to protect every person who moves around with cash.
From news coverage, we may be misled into thinking that only those with large amounts of cash are robbed– far from truth. Quite a number of persons making small teller and ATM withdrawals are also being robbed; many suffer in silence away from the reporter’s pen. Apart from giving personal awareness and safety tips, supported by efficient response mechanisms, even the best-equipped police forces around the world would be hard pressed to prevent this form of criminal enterprise.
For me, the chief culprit and accessory to this form of criminality is the banking sector itself. Why, despite all the advances in technology, Guyana remains a cash-heavy society? I studied in Trinidad around 2000, I utilised a universal payment gateway called LINX, it is locally based and functions similarly to VISA and Mastercard. It facilitates inter-bank ATMs, Point of Sale and many other electronic transactions from common consoles. My research suggests that this was introduced to Trinidad sometime around 1993.
Understandably, Guyana should be a few steps behind, but to be 25 years in deficit is simply mind-boggling. The banking sector has no excuses, the same technology used in advanced countries to facilitate such transactions has been available and in active use in Guyana for more than 20 years. The question is, why hasn’t the sector improved this aspect of its business, despite so many post-withdrawal deaths over such a long period?
There is a paucity of forward-thinking managers in the sector– to put it bluntly, Guyanese banking executives are backward and uncaring.
It is easier to declare billions of dollars in annual profits by levying Guyanese into the ground than to find practical solutions for a national problem that has caused so much blood to be running in the streets. There shouldn’t be concern about profit erosion, there is a lot of money to be made from implementing a monetary system with reduced cash. I am unshakeable in my belief that Guyana is heavily cas- based, because the banking sector wants it that way. The Bank of Guyana is also blameworthy: it is the entity most responsible for supervising and regulating the conduct of commercial banks and design of our monetary architecture.
I now come to money laundering. I am part of the wave of public opinion that Guyana remains a cash-based society, simply because a major section of the top management of the commercial banking sector are involved in white-collar financial ‘giggery-puggery’ that helps to protect money launderers and enables financial racketeering. It is in their interest and of those who benefit from the system to leave the gates open. The nation cries out for an explanation as to why some administrators are in death-defiance of law-enforcement scrutiny and judicial edicts.
How do you explain, even though it is well known that about a quarter of the nation’s population live in addressless locations, dams and squatter settlements, not served by utilities or regular postal services, but the sector demands utility bills and postal envelopes as the only legitimate proof of address? The poor who have little or no access to such resources are given the royal run around to establish accounts to temporarily hold salary pittances for a few hours after pay day.
Management of the banking sector know very well that any reasonable proof should fulfil legal and international obligations. Our voter-registration roll is among the most robust in the world, the villages inspect the voters’ lists for unknowns, individual political parties do verifications, independent NGOs and observer missions scrutinise the process, the said list is back-ended by biometric data such as fingerprints and photographs and is subjected to review every three years; vehicle registrations; driver’s licences; court depositions and business registrations are all government- issued documents containing addresses. In any modern state, any or all of the mentioned documents should constitute reasonable proof of address, but not in Guyana.
It is time we shift gears. The technology to reduce cash transactions is available, we need a combination of public education, a finance architecture established through regulations and bankers’ reorientation along with complementary law-enforcement support. This can be accomplished in less than a year; in the meantime, the fate of the next trail-and-rob victim is in the hands of those who manage the banking sector. It is time to stem the bloodshed.
