Panicked customers, faced with an acute cash crunch, lined up outside banks and ATMs across the country after the government announced the drastic demonetisation measure to check black money and terror funding. Four months on, the situation remains almost the same in some parts of the country, a survey shows.
“The availability of cash at ATMs has worsened in the last two months or so in many parts of the country. Eighty-three per cent citizens who visited ATMs last week in Hyderabad, could not find the cash. It was 69 per cent in Pune," according to a survey conducted by the LocalCircles citizen engagement platform.
In the survey, 36 per cent of the respondents said that they could not find cash in ATMs between April 5 and April 8. This number is a sharp increase from the 22 per cent who had faced problems in finding a cash dispensing ATM a month back, between February 14 and February 16.
Over 10,000 citizens from across India participated in the survey.
People said that they have been withdrawing large amounts from the ATMs as some banks are levying a transaction fee after every four withdrawals. This is perhaps leading to the ATMs quickly running out of cash.
LocalCircles conducted a citizen pulse check in 11 cities across India and found that Hyderabad was worst hit by ATM outages followed by Pune. Eighty-three per cent citizens in Hyderabad and 69 per cent in Pune said that they were unable to get cash from ATMs between April 5 and April 8.
Delhi recorded the highest amount of ATMs dispensing cash, with only 11 per cent citizens unable to find money in the ATMs during the period.
(With inputs from IANS)
