Our rulers
and law enforcing agencies wake up from their slumber only when some calamity
strikes us. Ministers express shock & remorse at the loss of lives of the
innocent people, sympathise with the kith and kin of the victims, visit the
site of occurrence ceremoniously with the camera crew, release nonsensical statements,
artificially sobbing. They will order enquiry to find out the cause of the
mishap & suggest remedial measures. This will give employment to a lethargic
retired officer or a judge, who will get an opportunity to make some easy
bucks. The report of the commission, however well argued, may or may not come
to the light. Neither the commission,
nor the Government that ordered the inquiry is serious about the outcome of the
probe. The authorities will sleep like Rip Van Winkle till the next mishap
occurs.
In the wake
of the brutal attack on a customer (she happened to be the manager of another
branch of the same Bank) in an ATM in Bangalore, Kochi police issued direction
to the Banks to ensure that every ATM booth has a security guard 24x7 along
with CCTV surveillance. Despite the order the police issued in the last week of
November 2013, nothing changed in the ATMs. The unguarded ATMs remain
unguarded.
Most of the
ATMs are away from the thoroughfares, in the unlit and deserted corners of malls
and streets. The unguarded ATMs of some of the nationalized Banks are locked,
can be accessed with the card of the customer. Those of the private sector
Banks are open, any thug or hoodlum can enter it any time, hide behind the
machine and pounce on an unsuspecting customer while he/she is operating the
machine.
The security
guards at the ATMs are mostly unhealthy old men retired from the Military,
incapable of guarding the ATMs or defending the customers. These tipplers doze
on the chair during the day time and sleep inside the air conditioned booth at
night. Some use the ATMs for retail vending of the “quota” they get.
The Banks
are making enormous profit from the ATMs, it is the reason for the rise in the
number of ATMs in the country. One NBFC, a shark, a looter, a Shylock also
jumped into the bandwagon with white line ATMs to get their share of the profit
Our
Government, our Police, our Banks will remain silent until another hapless
customer gets attacked in an ATM. Oommen Chandy, the CM of Kerala who went all
the way to Bangalore to visit the victim of attack in the ATM, as she hails from the state, has nothing to say on
the security aspects of ATMs in his state. For him it was a public relations
operation that will boost his yield in the forthcoming elections,
