B.S.P’s KIRAKIRA AGENT ACTED ACCORDINGLY, SAID MAKIRA P.S. SITAI
The Provincial Secretary for Makira Ulawa Province, Silas Sitai says the Bank South Pacific agent at Kirakira is acting in accordance with an advice from the Honiara main branch to halt withdrawals due to certain dishonest account holders.
Mr. Sitai confirmed the decision is effected after dishonest practices were discovered from certain individuals without ATM cards in Kirakira.
Responding to a Romano Haga’s call on both the provincial government and BSP for explanations on this, Mr. Sitai says the agent acted according to directions from the BSP headquarters in Honiara.
“The reason they gave is that they were advised from the BSP Headquarter through the branchless banking department to halt the customer who does not have ATM cards. This is because when BSP started to introduce its branchless banking agencies and the mobile banking, a lot of people are very canning. They are dishonest about their account balances.”
The Provincial Secretary says such dishonest practices are also causing overdrafts for the clients and even the provincial government as a BSP agent administrator.
“Such practices have caused a lot of overdraft problems to the account holders and clients and because they are withdrawing from us, we are often also penalized of the commission that we supposed to receive.”