I was having an ice cream cone with my wife and her visiting cousin at Banks DIH outlet at Quamina and Main Street last Friday when this gentleman came up to where I was sitting.
He asked my wife for an excuse to intervene to talk to me. I would describe him as mid-sixties of mixed ethnicity, probably Portuguese, Amerindian and Indian.

He had a huge brown envelope. He took out the contents and showed me papers one of the commercial banks gave him which list the stipulations for him to reactivate his account. He said the account went dormant for about five years and is not substantial. He was depressed over one criterion – he must provide proof of income for the past year.

This requirement was surprising so I told him the bank is insisting on that criterion because it wants to know where he got the money to now put into the reactivated account. Here is the shocker – he was not putting any money into the account. He just wants to reactivate it.

Why then with no movement of money, must the man provide proof of source of income? He is not putting money into his book so there is no movement of money. When the account is reactivated and he brings money to put into the bank, then you can ask him where he got it from.

There is a senior employee at Hand-in-Hand Insurance company. She told me she went to reactivate her account with less than $10, 000 and they asked for a ton of documents. She said she found it a nightmare and had a quick solution – she would close the account. The lady said she almost fainted when they told her she had to meet the same requirements to close it. She told me she would forfeit the small amount. How can that be right? Is that legal?

After I met the man at the Banks-DIH outlet, we decided to highlight the topic of commercial banks hassling small income earners of this county on the Freddie Kissoon/Gildarie Show. What we heard on that programme is mind-boggling; all the people involved are working class people.

A woman called in to say that she is a plant seller and she went to put $200, 000 into her account and they insist she must provide proof of where she got it. A former employee at the Central Bank, now working with one of the state-owned media, called to say that the tellers of the banks do not understand the anti-money laundering legislation. This lady’s description of the non-interest of the Central Bank in dealing with the excessive attitude of the commercial banks is worth listening to. It is available on the programme. You can get it on YouTube.

Enter Mr. Christopher Ram. All Guyanese in and out of the land knows that Mr. Ram writes profusely on financial matters and has been doing so for decades (not years). Do you know Mr Ram has not done even one letter or column on the misuse of the anti-money laundering legislation by the commercial banks that mainly affect working-class people? Mr Ram over the decades that I have known him has always told me his political leanings and ideological bent lean towards a working class orientation.

Do Guyanese know these two men – Dr. Clive Thomas and Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine? They were the top leaders in the WPA. What does WPA stand for? Working People’s Alliance. Go and read the political writings of these two men and you must believe that when they get onto government, they would help the working class. They did absolutely nothing to alleviate the nightmares the commercial bank caused small bank depositors.

Clive Thomas went to Buxton and told a meeting that every citizen must get an annual grant of 5,000 American dollars from oil revenue. He deliberately named his talk, “The Buxton Proposal” to appeal to the emotions of Buxtonians and Black people in Guyana but it remains a mystery why Buxtonians did not ask him what he did to stop the commercial banks harassing the African working class in Guyana.

Last week, former Finance Minister, Winston Jordan said that NIS pension money must be increased. When he was Finance Minister, he forgot to tell the commercial banks to stop oppressing low-income depositors. I end with a sentiment I have printed at the bottom of my column many times in my 35-year-old career in journalism. Here it is – God is dead, Marx is dead, Gandhi is dead, Mandela is dead, Gorbachev is dead and I’m not feeling too well myself.