Cash crunch cramps commuters, customers

On Monday morning, a desperate Sean Ramsay moved from one automated-teller machine (ATM) to another in Portmore, St Catherine, making multiple attempts to withdraw funds to pay his fare to go to work.

All dispensers were out of cash, leaving Ramsay, an auxiliary worker at a school in downtown Kingston, stranded for more than an hour.

The despondent man then walked to a Scotiabank drive-thru ATM at the institution’s Braeton Parkway location after all other efforts failed.

His luck did not change.

A good Samaritan behind him in the queue would come to his rescue, offering him a ride into Kingston.

Scores of commuters who depend on taxis and buses to transport them from Portmore and the neighbouring Spanish Town were similarly stranded on Monday, unable to travel into Kingston without cash.

Gleaner checks in Portmore revealed that no ATM in the municipality was dispensing cash between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. on Monday. However, machines in downtown Kingston, Cross Roads, and Half-Way-Tree in the Corporate Area were dispensing funds.

Scotiabank ATMs in Portmore only allowed users to check their balance, while a CIBC FirstCaribbean International Bank’s ATM stated: “We are sorry, this transaction cannot be performed at this time due to a hardware malfunction. Please try again later.”

The cash crisis came on the heels of the latest attack on a Beryllium cash-in-transit team in St Thomas on Saturday, following at least three such similar attacks since February. The situation resulted in the disruption of services as many ATMs were not serviced.

Following Saturday’s attack, the National Commercial Bank notified customers that there would be a disruption in ATM services.

On Monday, distressed bank customers accused the companies of deliberately not servicing the machines.

“Dem a mek di good suffer for the bad. Because they were robbed in Portmore, they are not willing to come and refill the ATMs with funds, and we just have to suffer as a result of it. There is nothing much the poor people can do to save themselves from the situation,” Portmore resident and commuter Kay Osbourne told The Gleaner in disgust.

“We don’t have cars to go to the gas station and swipe our cards to pay for transportation. We have to take buses and taxis to go to work. If we don’t have cash, we can’t pay for our rides, and not only we are affected, but our children who need to go to school and our elderly persons who need cash-in-hand to go to their various clinic appointments or to get their remittances on a Monday morning or for them to go buy food and pay their bills,” she added.

Another woman, who did not wish to be identified, said the unavailability of cash at the ATMs has become an all-too-frequent occurrence since the first attack in February.

“On payday last week, it was the same. It was a disaster in Portmore! There were absolutely no funds in Portmore on the morning of payday from as early as 6 a.m.!” she told The Gleaner.

“I went to the CIBC [bank’s] ATM first. There was no money. I went to the Scotiabank across the road, there was no money. I went to the Sagicor ATM in Portmore Sovereign, there was no money. I went to the two Scotiabank ATMs at the Texaco gas station nearby, there was no money. I went to the NCB ATM nearest to the other gas station nearby, and there were no funds available as well.” she complained as she, too, accused the companies of spiting customers.

She also added that in recent weeks, Portmore residents have had to wait until after midday on Mondays to start getting cash as the machines are no longer been replenished on weekends.

With numerous digital wallet services, including MyCash and Lynk, becoming available in recent times, Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) President Metry Seaga believes that transitioning Jamaica to a fully cashless system would solve the problem.

He expressed concern for citizens, entrepreneurs and business operators who were affected by the shortage of cash at ATMs on Sunday going into Monday.

“It is a terrible situation and we (the PSOJ) understand both aspects of it. We understand that people want to use their cards [and] get money out of the machines, and we also understand from the company’s point of view that they are having these targeted attacks on them and it is affecting their ability to do business, so it’s something that we’re mindful of and aware of, and hope that the authorities will bring these people to justice quickly,” Seaga told The Gleaner.

“It’s one of the reasons that we have been pushing cards for us to move to a cashless society as quickly as possible, and that’s the direction that we are going in,” he added.