A CASH ECONOMY BREEDS CRIME

Feb 17, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

I once saw an old man in the bank making a huge withdrawal. In those days, choke- and rob- crimes were rampant and persons were often wary of their withdrawals from the bank being snatched on the road.
The old man was no doubt wary of this. He had walked with his young grandson who had a lunch kit. After the old man made the withdrawal, he placed the money in his grandson’s lunch kit.
Then he took out a large envelope and stuffed it with withdrawal slips which were about the same size as of a twenty dollar note. (In those days there were no one hundred dollar bills. Nor five hundred notes. These make much later.)
The old man was obviously using a decoy. The envelope packed with withdrawal slips was to deceive any intended robber that the money was in the envelope, when it fact it was in a child’s lunch kit.
That old man would not attempt that plot today, for two reasons. Firstly, he was sure that the threat came from outside of the bank and therefore was not worried about his decoy being observed inside.
Today there is a strong feeling that criminals are sending spies within banks under the disguise of legitimate customers and they are observing what is taking place within. It is something that the banking authorities and the police will have to take greater note of.
The second reason why the old man would not attempt such a move today is because it is no longer a case of choke- and- rob anymore. Now the robbers are coming with guns and therefore there is no way to hide you cash.
Once you are stuck, it does not matter where you hide the money. You have to find it and hand it over or risk being shot and worse yet shot and killed.
This is why it is still unnerving to learn that persons are still having massive amounts of cash on their person, whether it is when leaving a bank or a cambio.
There are still many persons who are leaving such institutions with millions in their possession and being robbed while on their way home.
It is always unfortunate when this happens and one must condemn the practice of robbing persons of what they have worked hard for. No one should be as easily dispossessed as they are today in Guyana and it shows there is a serious security crisis which the police are not able to effectively deal with.
But as much as one can bemoan the lack of security, there is also the million dollar question as to why persons are moving around with so much cash on their person.
One of the main problems is the cash nature of the local economy.
Too many transactions simply require large amounts of cash. This has to do with traditional practice whereby not many people are accustomed to paying with cheques.
And despite the presence now of electronic modes of payment, only a small number of businesses actually are capable of doing this.
One of the problems is that there is single portal that would allow any bankcard holder to pay.
If you wish to pay by electronic means at a business, you have to hope that that company does business with your bank, other wise you may find that the company only accepts electronic payment from one bank and your card cannot be used.
This is one of the things that the government should be looking at immediately. It is not as if there are hundreds of banks in the country. And it is unreasonable to have business having ABM machines for all the major banks. They should have one single machine which can accept payments from any bank. This is something that was touted a long time ago.
There was a commitment some time ago for this sort of integrated system to be in place and it should be because it would allow more and more persons to make payments by electronic cards.
But it is not going to solve the problem of persons moving around with large amounts of cash simply because the value of our dollar is so low that even to do your weekly groceries means that you have to have a large amount of cash in your hand ; to go to the night clubs you need to walk with lots of money.
This is risk that emerges because despite the economic growth over the past years in Guyana, despite the improvements in the economy, the value of the Guyana remains very low compared to the US dollar against which most international transactions are based.
So long as our dollar remains hovering at 1-200 against the US dollars there will always be persons being forced to walk round with large amounts of cash.
Thus it is necessary that businesses be allowed to go electronic a prototype AMB machine is developed that accepts all cards so as to reduce this incidence

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A CASH ECONOMY BREEDS CRIME

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