Liquidity crisis haunts the residents of smaller towns and villages. While there are more than 20 ATMs on the town’s main road not one is dispensing cash and shutters are down at some of them.
Those in desperate need of cash are taking it from non-bank sources paying commission. S. Ramakrishna, a resident of Shanti Nagar here, paid a commissin to a vendor for cash as he could not find a single functional ATM for the last two days.
“I took cash from a friend who runs a puncture shop. He collected the commission charged by the banks for card swiping. I had no option but to accept his offer,” Mustaq, a petty vendor on the bypass road, said.
No solution in sight
Residents of the town have been narrating similar stories for the past two weeks. They are not sure when the cash situation would become normal.
Many of the customers who had withdrawn cash were not depositing it in the bank, a banker said adding that this was one of the reasons for the situation.
Residents of bigger towns like Patancheru, Sangareddy, Jogipet, Narayanakhed and Zaheerabad are able to manage money from one or the other sources and it has become a herculean task for people residing in rural areas. “Cash has become a big problem. We are taking groceries from a local merchant promising to pay him with interest whenever we get cash,” Bhaskar of Nagalgidda, one of the backward areas in the district, said.
