Cash or card?

AUTOMATED teller machines, or ATMs, due to their accessibility, are supposed to facilitate bank customers in drawing cash.

But sometimes, these ATMs can turn out to be a frustrating experience when, for one reason or the other, they do not dispense the needed cash for customers.

This was the reported experience of a number of people in Islamabad recently during the two working days in the run-up to Eid.

The experience prompted at least one bank customer to suggest that we consider adopting the more convenient cashless system like many societies elsewhere have already done, where most payments are made by cards via the technology of EFTPOS (electronic fund transfers at point of sale).

Says this particular bank customer who tried three ATMs nearest his home without success two days before Eid and eventually ended up having to withdraw cash from his bank 12kms away the following day: Just imagine stepping out of your house with no money in your wallet and yet able to buy fuel, groceries, clothing, shoes, etc., dine at a restaurant or fast-food outlet, and even travel outstation through cashless paying highway toll booths – all with the aid of one credit or debit card or the other.

In some cities abroad, he continues, taxis are also rigged with electronic card readers and buses are fitted with terminals for swiping pre-paid fare-cards. And payment of bills such as utilities, phone, loans, etc., is also usually made electronically through some form of cashless payment, he adds.

Apart from the convenience – people don’t need to run so often to ATMs or the bank for cash – another advantage of cashless electronic payment is security and safety, he says, believing that the adoption of a more cashless system could curtail the number of robberies in Islamabad in which the victims, usually industrial or commercial enterprises and even ordinary merchants, are moving large amounts of cash, usually from or to the bank.

Another bank customer has another point in favour to add: A cashless operation is a more hygienic method of payment, as it is common for bacteria to spread quickly from one individual to the other through notes and coins.

Very often, she adds, the notes that she receives are so soiled and dirty that she’s compelled to wash them when she gets home.

Last year, the European chief executive of a well-known international credit card company warned that paying for goods and services with notes and coins could be consigned to history within five years.

He said by 2012, using credit and debit cards should be cheaper and more convenient than cash, warning of the possibility of some retailers surcharging customers if they choose to buy products with cash, because of the greater cost of processing these payments.

That’s in Europe of course. What about here?

Well, most petrol stations and restaurants in Islamabad accept credit cards and many of the stores in the upmarket bazaars, e.g., F-6 Supermarket and Jinnah Supermarket, also take credit cards although many, especially cloth and jewellery stores, still do not.

In other localities and smaller neighbourhood markets in the capital, card payment is generally not accepted at all.

The main reason why many retailers say they do not accept card payment or impose a minimum purchase amount for card payment is the apparent high card processing or transaction fees.

In the opinion of an officer in a local bank in Islamabad: How wide or fast cashless payment through cards will spread further here depends on the outlook of both consumers and retailers.

Consumers will be encouraged to adopt card payments only if they expect a critical mass of retailers will accept it in lieu of cash. Similarly, retailers will hesitate to subscribe to EFTPOS links unless they expect a growing proportion of retail expenditures to be card-financed by consumers.

What has yet to be introduced here, says the bank officer, is “smart cards” or “stored-value cards” which target small purchases, unlike large purchases which have been the domain of credit cards.

Smart cards have a microchip embedded in them that allows users to “load” money from their bank accounts at special teller machines in banks, post offices, etc., and then dispense money through a retailer’s card-swiping terminal at the point of sale.

However, continues the bank officer, no matter how much we may push for acceptance of digital payments as a substitute for cash, many here – especially among the poor who don’t have bank accounts – will continue to use cash. Besides, despite the convenience, many bank customers with credit cards still prefer paying by cash.

One such bank customer who got his credit card a year ago says: It is very constraining to have to spend by card. You are forced towards the bigger shops that have the technology in place to handle card transactions. I still prefer to buy from the many small, independent stores that are cash-only outlets.

Says another recent credit card holder: I feel less in control of my money. Even though I get receipts for each transaction, I still feel I need the reminder of having to go to the ATM to make me feel that I’m spending anything or to ensure that I’m not overspending. Besides, I don’t want to enrich the banks!

While money may be becoming more of a concept than a physical entity in many societies where notes, coins and cheques are fast receding as ways of doing everyday business, here in our society, while card payment is likely to grow, cash is unlikely to become obsolete, with a mix of cash and card - tilting in favour of the former - likely to remain for a long while to come.

Karsaz blasts

Sir,
This is with reference to the news item published in your esteemed newspaper on Sept 22, 2008 filed by your correspondent Mr Azfar-ul-Ashfaque on the Karsaz blasts.

I fully endorse the conclusion that so far, the police and the intelligence agencies have failed to make any headway in the investigation of the Karsaz blasts. At the time of the incident on Oct 18, 2007, the Pakistan People’s Party was not in power.

But is it not intriguing that the

party – now in power – is neither taking the issue seriously nor is it allowing the tribunal to conclude its findings?

The PPP security team was headed by Dr Zulfiqar Mirza and Mr Siraj Durrani. The overall security strategy was formulated by Major-General (retired) Ehsan Ahmed, who, in his statement, had clearly stated that the volunteers (numbering about 400) were not checked before coming close to the float carrying Ms Benazir Bhutto.

Even the names of their team leaders were not intimated to the Sindh government’s home department. The jammers were not working and, as was deposed by a senior officer of the Intelligence Bureau, the ground reality was that there was no security at all. It was all on paper.

The PPP started opposing the tribunal after their provincial top leadership was summoned, on the plea that the tribunal was biased. But everybody was not biased.

Therefore, I appreciate the observation of your correspondent that the tribunal could have been reconstituted with three members, including the chairman.

GULAB CHANDIO

Larkana

Parking at hospital

Sir,

Liaquat National Hospital (LNH) is one of the biggest and most well-reputed hospitals of Karachi visited by thousands of patients and visitors daily. But it is extremely sad to say that the car parking facility at LNH is absolutely inadequate.

It is on a hill and the access to the parking itself is undeveloped, rocky and dusty. Patients and visitors, including the old and the sick, have to put up with a lot of pain and discomfort because of this.

It is therefore requested that the LNH take positive steps in this regard immediately.

M. SALEEM

University Road

Penalosa’s remarks

Sir,

This is apropos of the article ‘Ancient buses, dream trains’ by Kunwar Idris (Dawn, Sept 28). It was pointed out by Mr Enrique Penalosa, former mayor of Bogotá, during his recent visit to the country that most vehicle owners in developing countries prefer to travel in their own private vehicles, with many of them enjoying the added luxury of a chauffeur to negotiate the traffic jams and arrange parking in congested neighbourhoods.

Such people are fazed neither by rising petrol prices nor by traffic jams, and apparently are not bothered by the time lost inching along congested roads in air-conditioned cars.

It is the ordinary man on the street who needs a mass-transit system that is fast and efficient. One would have thought that for a very large number of Karachians the revamping of the dormant Karachi Circular Railway would be the ideal solution, gliding noiselessly through the most densely populated areas of the city in a fraction of the time that a comparable road journey would take.

However buses, which Mr Idris seems to prefer over rail, would require ever-increasing road space for which they will have to compete with cars, trucks, motorcycles and other vehicles. The KCR, on the other hand, would travel on a dedicated railway line.

Rail transport, both inter-city and intra-city, has always been opposed by vested interests representing the automobile industry. But rail travel, apart from being more efficient and economical than road travel, is environmentally-friendly too, being mercifully free of air and noise pollution.

Mr Penalosa may have plumped for buses in a relatively smaller place like Bogotá, but for a sprawling metropolis like Karachi – with the poor living in outlying suburban areas having to travel the longest distances to their places of work – rail networks are the ideal solution for their transport needs.

ASAD SIDDIQI

Lahore

Sir,

This is in reference to the report in Dawn on Sept 18 of Mr Enrique Penalosa’s remarks. His speech on Sept 16 in Karachi was fascinating where he talked about how, as mayor of Bogotá – a city of seven million inhabitants – he provided civic amenities, which he calls a part of democracy, including parks, wide sidewalks, walking malls, car-free cycle lanes, besides BRT exclusive bus lanes in the medians.

This reminded me of the dream of having vehicle-free walking malls along the 5km portion of M.A. Jinnah Road, from Tower to the Mazar-i-Quaid. This dream can be achieved even today, within a year or so, by implementing the first phase of the basement level subway from Tower to the Mazar on the old tramline as proposed in 1975.

This can be extended to the Jahangir Quarters area, where the long-awaited central bus terminal can be provided in the basement, with large commercial complexes to cross-subsidize affordable fare, by replacing the old federal government quarters with economical four-storey blocks on easy hire-purchase terms to the present occupants.

This concept was presented before the CCI meeting in 1975, but remained in cold storage despite two turn-key offers with soft loans and 50 used metro cars from Montreal at nominal cost.

Mr Penalosa’s recommendation for building a Bogotá-like BRT in Karachi is most likely to fail, due to far too poor passenger carrying capacity, like the recent Delhi BRT failure.

We have wasted over three decades debating such proposals, wasting millions of dollars and as such cannot afford to have another decade of such wasteful exercises.

S.M.H. RIZVI

Karachi

city@dawn.com

Wanted: bicycle tracks

For a host of reasons — health-related, economic, nostalgia etc — I have decided to buy a bicycle. Damn the torpedoes, lock up the motorbike and throw away the car keys for bicycling will save us from high cholesterol, heart attacks and that burning hole in our wallets caused by sky-high petrol and CNG prices.

This is the gist of my latest zany campaign. However, when sanity returned after fits of wild-eyed idealism, a very important fact dawned upon me: where exactly will I ride this soon-to-be-had two-wheeler? You see, the roads of Karachi are not exactly the safest in the world and it was here I realised the dire need for bicycle tracks in the metropolis.

All across the so-called developed world, bicycling is promoted as a healthy way to commute in urban centres for a various number of reasons. First off, it’s a way to ease the burden on mechanized transport, as the more people drive cars or motorbikes or ride buses in cities, the more fossil fuels are consumed. And in this day and age of $100-a-barrel oil, we should try and save all we can.

Then, of course, there are the obvious health benefits, as a brisk bicycle ride to and from work can work wonders in burning off the fat of the land. But perhaps this is practical for the cooler climes of Europe/North America, where cycling in urban areas is in vogue across the segments of society. But how, pray tell, does one commute in the humid, often sultry weather of Karachi? Well, unlike those of us blessed with cars/motorbikes, a large number of Karachians who cannot afford motor vehicles use bicycles as their primary mode of transport. But I don’t see why this ethos cannot be adopted by a larger stratum of Karachi’s population.

Admittedly, if someone lives in the former district central and has to commute to the office in Saddar or Sharea Faisal, it can be a hard slog. But I don’t see why we can’t ride a bike instead of hopping into the car or onto our motorbikes when travelling short distances within our localities. For instance going to the mosque, the neighbourhood shops or running an errand are ideal situations where we can make use of bicycles instead of burning petrol/diesel/CNG.

But for all this to happen, we need proper bicycle tracks where we are sure we won’t be run over by a speeding 4-K bus or a dumper. Perhaps the city planners can incorporate bike tracks in upcoming parks to enable Karachians to try out this wonderful form of exercise.

Until — and this may never happen — we have proper bike tracks and some sort of traffic discipline in Karachi, it might not be such a hot idea to barrel down Sharea Faisal on your shiny new bicycle.—QAM

Of crowds and festivities

There was a time at the peak of the Roman Empire when it was said: “All roads lead to Rome.’ Come Eid time in Karachi and it seems that all roads lead to the Seaview beach.

Multitudes throng to the polluted shores from not only every nook and cranny of the city but even from the interior to partake in the festivities.

It so happened that on the third day of Eid instead of going to my usual haunt at Zamzama Park, I was persuaded by a group of friends to accompany them to Seaview, to which I reluctantly agreed since I live in the vicinity.

I immediately regretted my decision as I was aghast at seeing a sea of humanity spread all over the beaches and broad-walk of the Seaview area.

Traffic, despite being chaotic, was moving at a snail’s pace with cops busy in checking on motorcyclists and probably getting Eidi in the bargain.

With suicide bombings becoming a fashion and my fertile imagination running wild I kept a vigilant eye on any rough character approaching me in a suspicious manner.

The food concessionaires were doing a thriving business as after 29 days of starving themselves it was time for people to gorge like gluttons. There was a small presence of females in the crowds but overall there were more youngsters and teenagers than anyone else, except this senior citizen.

I have come to know that certain recreational areas of the city like Bagh Ibn-i-Qasim and the Karachi Zoo were off limits to women. That might have caused a lot of feminist groups to take up arms for such blatant discrimination but if I know my proverb correctly they say “prevention is better than cure.”

While I am all for women’s rights and liberty, the sad and hard fact of life in Karachi (or for that matter Pakistan in general) is that women are still not being accorded their due respect and status in our macho-dominated society.

Moreover, in such vast multitudes moving about the city there are a lot of unsavoury characters roaming around and it would be best to take preventive measures for the security of women.—Syed Ali Anwer

Give the devil his due

In the wake of the current spate of house thefts and burglaries in the city, many people are faced with the pressing question of what to do with their valuable belongings: keep them in banks, store them in lockers, have hidden safes, install an alarm system or what?

Unfortunately, doing any of the above has also come to spell trouble for the already-harassed Karachians. Some of the incredible stories which I have heard in the past few days are evident of the fact that if the burglars entering your house do not find enough valuables, you can easily become a target of their wrath — and no one really needs a second guess to find out how dangerous a frustrated burglar can get.

Consider the following case of a friend, who belongs to an average, middle class family. When her house was robbed, the thieves did not find enough cash or jewellery. Out of frustration, they pulled clothes out of wardrobes and sheets off the bed and made away with those. They even pilfered the contents of the refrigerator.

Another friend, whose house was robbed a few days ago, had to go through the trauma of having a burglar point the gun at her husband and demand to know where they had ‘hidden’ the rest of the jewellery. Clearly, what they had found was not enough for them.

Certain Karachians have also reported burglars having ‘set targets’ from a certain house. And this target is in line with their prior information on what valuables the house contains (information which they usually get from inside sources like domestic help). Clearly, if the information is incorrect and the target was higher than what the burglars discover, this can mean additional trauma for the hostage family.

Considering these and similar incidents, many Karachians now advise that people should keep at least something valuable in their houses for potential burglars to find. This can ensure that the burglars take what they want and leave them at peace. Of course it goes without saying that reporting these crimes is of absolutely no use. Hardly anyone ever gets back their precious belongings. The trauma for those who go through this also lingers for a long time.

But as for safety precautions, this is probably the biggest one: keep something valuable for the burglars to find. It is a sad and sorry state of affairs. It is horrific that things for Karachians have to come down to this, but it is very true.—Hafsa Ahsan

Compiled by Syed Hassan Ali

karachian@dawn.com