New Delhi: Tempers ran high as millions of anxious cash-starved people waited for hours for the third day in a row on Saturday outside overworked banks to deposit or exchange their spiked denomination notes or withdraw cash from heavily crowded ATMs across India.
There was no end in sight to the misery as people continued to suffer in getting cash to buy daily essentials. And to add to their miseries, many complained that shopkeepers have started charging exorbitant rates as retail sales plummeted.
Desperate people began forming serpentine queues outside banks much before they opened – the way they have been doing since Wednesday morning, a day after the government announced demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes.
The frustration and anger was growing among people holding the now-invalid 500 and 1,000 rupee notes in the winding queues outside almost all banks in the country.
In Mumbai, many cancelled their long weekend break and queued up outside banks and ATMs to fight the cash constraint.
ATMs, dispensing only Rs 100 notes, were running out of cash. Nearly two lakh teller machines are yet to be readied to dispense Rs 50 notes or newly-minted Rs 2,000 bills, adding to the problem – a fact Finance Minister Arun Jaitley acknowledged.
Jaitley said it would take two-three weeks to recalibrate the ATMs across the country for the new notes. “It will be a slow process. Such a big cash replacement cannot happen in a mechanical way overnight,” the minister said.
The government appealed for patience with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was in Japan, saying people had largely hailed his decision but some were being prodded to protest.
In Chennai, several angry customers vented their frustration at ATMs after failing to take out money from their accounts, officials said.
Fisticuffs also broke out among customers in several parts of the country with some ire directed at bank officials who have been called upon by the government to meet the huge demand for currency notes of lower denomination.
Business across the nation remained dull as small traders said they were badly affected because their business has gone down by nearly 50 per cent in the last three days.
Industrial hubs in Punjab and Haryana were also suffering as representatives complained their business transactions were badly hit. (IANS)
