DERA ISMAIL KHAN: The face of Akhtar Khan was filled with anger.

The reason was that a bank’s automated teller machine, outside which he had long been waiting for his turn to withdraw salary on Saturday, was faulty.

“You see this monstrous machine has kept us waiting for four hours. This is a perfect picture of how the state of affairs is here,” the government employee said.

These days, long queues of people could be seen outside ATMs in the city, especially those on the East Circular Road.

DI Khan residents complain most machines faulty or without cash

Most visitors to ATMs need cash either to go shopping or to buy animals to sacrifice on Eidul Azha.

However, many of them complain ATMs usually don’t dispense money for one reason or the other.

Among the messages shown by faulty ATMs are ‘out of cash,’ ‘sorry for inconvenience,’ ‘ATM is closed for maintenance work,’ ‘link is down,’ ‘service is not available,’ and ‘your transaction could not be completed this time.’ Like Akhtar Khan, Rizwanul Islam, too, complained most ATMs in the city were not working.

He said his bank had only one ATM in the city to the misery of its account holders. “My bank should install more machines (ATMs) in the city and district,” he said.

When contacted, the relevant representative of a bank’s East Circular Road branch claimed the ATM of his bank was properly maintained and that it dispensed money round the clock.

“When ATM works properly, no one comes to me for a word of appreciation but when we suspend service for a while to put cash or receipt roll in it, people flock to me complaining. Believe me that ATM operations at my bank are going smoothly,” he insisted.

The banker said his bank was committed to serving its account holders and would continue doing whatever was possible to improve its services, including customer service.

Another employee of a bank said many people, including some Benazir Income Support Programme card holders, didn’t know how to use ATM and therefore, when they inserted cards over and over, the machine went out of order.

He said at times, bank staff suspended service temporarily to make pestering ATM or BISP card holders disperse in a bid to prevent possible damage to machine.

Published in Dawn, October 5th, 2014