General News of Monday, 23 July 2018
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
2018-07-23
Tweneboah Kodua, Executive Secretary of Midland Savings and Loans
The Executive Secretary of Midland Savings and Loans, Tweneboah Kodua, has stated that the financial institution will not cease its operational activities despite pressure from the public particularly after a video of a middle-aged woman assaulted by a policeman surfaced last week.
The woman, Patience Osafo, was said to have refused to leave the banking hall after the company failed to allow her withdraw an amount of GHC250 from her savings account, prompting some staff to allegedly call in the AK-47-wielding policeman, Corporal Frederick Amanor, to get her out and in the process, assaulted her.
Some customers, angered by the barbaric act by the police personnel stormed the premises of the bank to retrieve all their monies, Monday morning.
A few who spoke to www.ghanaweb.com stated that aside being angry about the cruel act by Amanor, they are more frustrated and disappointed in the mediocre treatment meted out to them by staff of the bank and the fact that they have had to visit Midland consistently for over a month and yet still have not accessed their monies.
According to them, they were given “flimsy” excuses or were unattended to mostly.
The Savings and Loans Company has come under pressure since the company’s network, managed by an information technology company, went down from Tuesday, July 17, 2018, until the evening of Thursday, June 19, 2018.
Deputy Managing Director of Midlands, Isaac Mensah in an interview by Daily Graphic noted how back-up system got very slow during the period, making it impossible to facilitate transactions as quickly as possible for customers.
While condemning the act by the Police officer, Tweneboah Kodua, pleaded with customers to exercise patience while assuring that management is making all efforts to deal with the internal processes and procedures for them to have their monies.
Mr. Kodua said, “We will continue to support the public so that whoever that has money here will get their monies. The institution will continue to operate and we do not expect anyone to run institution and say that I am coming to take my money. Otherwise then we want to kill the institution ourselves not because of any other thing. And so we will want the public to remain calm so that everything will be done as we want.”
He further added that employees found guilty as a result of their “failure” to handle the matter in the way they were trained will be dealt with appropriately.
“As we speak now what happened was an unfortunate incidence which we all condemn but we also want to ensure the public that we will give sanctions to whoever is found culpable. Management has also taken steps to deal with the internal processes and procedures that were not followed.”
He advised other financial institutions to take a cue and learn lessons.