Following the government’s intervention in the case of two distressed banks, Capital Bank and UT bank, and the reported problems at Unibank, some Ghanaians are calling for a probe of Bank of Ghana (BoG), especially the Apex Bank over their contributions to the problem.
Some of the people calling for the BoG to be probed are the customers of North Birem Rural Bank, formerly Asuoprah Rural Bank in the New Abirem District of the Eastern region.
To the customers of the insolvent bank, the Apex Bank, a subsidiary of the BoG in charge of rural banks supervision, has questions to answer for taking no action to prevent customers’ savings from going down the drain.
Speaking on behalf of the clients of the bank who have been affected badly by the turn of events, Mr. Prince Adinyira, their spokesperson, said the state institutions have failed the people whose savings cannot be accounted for.
“Because nobody is called to account for some of these acts of irresponsibility, supervisory institutions sit down aloof as taxpayers’ monies get wasted,” he said, asking what the Apex Bank and the Bank of Ghana were doing whilst these banks collapse like straw houses.
“Until some people are held accountable, I can predict the fall of many more banks with many more Ghanaians losing their savings very soon.”
“The officers at the Bank of Ghana and Apex Bank must as a matter of urgency be hauled before an investigative body to tell Ghanaians how they failed to see the signals and how they sat down and fed on fat salaries without doing the work they were being paid to do,” he stated.
The customers, whose hard-earned deposits, running into tens of thousands of Ghana Cedis, have been locked up at the bank for some years now, are still counting their loss and pointing accusing fingers at the Central Bank for failing to protect their monies saved with the bank.
Many of the customers have become destitute, with their wards withdrawing from school for lack of fees.
Some of them, who are farmers, have abandoned their crops in the farms because they cannot raise the capital to clear the land and buy some inputs or farming implements.
The situation is even worse for those who put their pension money into their accounts at the bank with the view to doing one project or the other with it. They have regretted that decision and currently are looking up to government’s intervention to save them from complete destitution.
They have written petitions to the Bank of Ghana and past presidents but none has responded to their petitions. In spite of several publications, the situation remains the same or has even worsened.
The leadership of the Apex Bank at Koforidua, when contacted by the customers a few years ago, said it was investigating the case in order to restore the bank to life, an assurance that seems to have faded into thin air.
Over five hundred (500) customers have been affected by the problem, in addition to those who are indirectly linked to it.
“We are still waiting to hear from government, no matter how long it takes. Justice must be done at all cost to restore our hard-earned cash back to us,” Mr. Adinyira said.
