Tisungtaba Community Bank clients call on gov’t to help them retrieve locked up funds

Clients of the Tisungtaba Community Bank in the North East Region are appealing to government to help them retrieve their monies from the struggling bank.

The rural bank which originally serves several communities in the North East Region is now a pale shadow of itself as citi news checks reveals that the ceiling fans are covered in dust and the banking hall doesn’t appear to have been used recently.

This bank has been the only alternative to conventional banking except the use of Savings and mobile money transactions in this area since 2018.

The Security guard at the bank, Salifu Gideon is yet to come to terms with the challenges of the bank.

“When we first started, at most they will pay us on 25th of the month. Sometimes 22nd; but it’s been two years now since things started going bad and I haven’t been paid for three months now.”

Some disappointed customers on the premises of the bank.

Citi Business News sources in the community revealed that at least customers picket at the bank very frequently to demand for their money. Depositors and public sector workers who take their monthly salary through this bank like have had same challenges.

Abdul Rafik Asumah, a teacher, told Citi Business News that ince December 2019, the bank owes him.

“I have come for my salary for February, but we have not received it. They promised today they will give us the money, now we are here and we are still waiting for them.”

According to Mr. Asumah, the bank could not pay him from December to February.

“since December I did not get my salary. January, I came and they gave me only 1,000 cedis and said they will send me the rest. They did not. This month too the same. So, the remaining balance since December up to now is still with them”, he said.

The bank has two branches; one at Nalerigu, and the other at Gambaga. Protests upon protests by residents have yielded no results.

The customers are now appealing to the government to intervene and get them their locked monies.

“My money is locked there for some months now. I don’t receive anything whenever I come here; they keep tossing us up and down. I don’t know which government caused the problem for us. My children were sacked from school to come for money, but where is the money”, said Ismael Asurogo, another client of the TIsungtaba Community Bank.

It is unclear what may have accounted for this bank’s challenges, but at a time many financial institutions have had their licenses revoked due to insolvency and several breaches, one is tempted to believe that this bank could be one of the many waiting to go down, if the Bank of Ghana focuses its clean-up exercise on rural and community banks.

And until that happens, depositors may never be able to retrieve their funds. Management of the Bank declined to speak to Citi Business News.