Management of The Upper Amenfi Rural Bank Ltd has been accused of cunningly defrauding its customers, impoverishing many and leaving them with serious economic and social hardships.
As a result, a cross-section of its customers are calling on the Bank of Ghana, the Apex Bank and related stakeholders, including the President, His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo, to as a matter of urgency intervene to retrieve their monies for them.
The customers further called on government to move in swiftly to close down the bank to prevent further damages to other people.
According to aggrieved and furious customers who spoke to this paper, most of them, who plied their trade in the mining sector have been with the bank for over three years without any issues.
According to them, the bank has benefited so much from them through their savings, loans, overdrafts and allied services.
However they are surprised that only this year when the bank realized that their contracts with their parent companies were almost over, they billed them with fictitious and unexplained bills that took away all their take home entitlements and even left them with debts to pay.
They further revealed that, the bank in fraudulently charging them with unwarranted charges caused them to borrow monies elsewhere to pay off remaining of the fraudulent charges after they had used all their entitlements to defray portions of the charges.
A customer, whose identity has been withheld for obvious reasons, cried bitterly to the reporter of this paper, weeping that, his contract with his company (name withheld) has come to an end and was paid GH¢15,000.00 by the company, which amount went to the bank (Upper Amenfi Rural Bank Ltd).
According to him, he was expecting to pay an outstanding amount of GH¢8,000.00 to completely clear himself with a loan transaction he had with the bank
He said that, the bank fraudulently took the whole amount of GH¢15,000.00 and made him to go for other loans to pay GH¢5,340.00 extra to clear himself.
To him, he claims that, in view of this, the bank has fraudulently taken GH¢12,340.00 extra from him, an amount he is demanding from the bank.
“The leadership of this bank is fraud, imagine what they have done to us at a time we have finished our contracts and we are going home. They are cruel and insensitive; after gaining so much from us over the period”, the client of the bank bemoaned.
“Nana Addo, Bank of Ghana, Apex Bank and all well-meaning Ghanaians, come and save us, come and save our families, come and save us from broken homes, diseases and all these ordeal this bank has visited on us,” he added.
Other customers that this paper spoke to complained of similar ordeal, revealing that, this has resulted in serious health and physical conditions for many of them.
Management of The Bank Shows Gross Arrogance to this paper
Upon a visit to the premises of the bank by this reporter in an attempt to seek reactions of the management of the bank in relation to the allegations leveled against them, the bank met the reporter with gross disrespect and arrogance
In spite of taking the pain to travel from Accra to Sefwi Ankwawso near Diaso in the Western North region of Ghana just for their side of the story, the management of the bank refused to speak on the matter, rather choosing to speak to their client to calm him down.
Rural banks have come under the scrutiny of the general public in recent times following the banking sector clean up; and in view of how many are alleged of taking advantage of innocent and ignorant rural folk.
The Bank of Ghana and the Apex Bank have been called upon to ‘stitch the situation to save nine’, as the saying goes.
