Mumbai: A bank manager has given a glimpse of an inside picture of her bank, where staff are overworking to meet the demands of its users after Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared Rs 500 and Rs 1000 denomination notes illegal tender.
People from all strata of the society, from across the nation, have been lining outside banks and post officer to exchange their old notes with new ones.
There are people who seem to have stashed cash in their homes for years, and now coming to the banks to deposit or exchange them. And, according to the banker, those currencies smell like “rotten leather”.
“On one end there were chaiwallas, istriwallas who are queuing up to deposit their hard earned money but on the other end we're receiving black money that had been stashed away for years possibly and all this cash smells like rotten leather,” the bank manager said in a post on Humans of Bombay's Facebook page.
She said the stench is unbearable, prompting one of our branches to ordered masks for the cashiers.
As banks and ATMs are facing shortage of cash, the tension among the public has intensified, and the banks are facing the heat too.
“From fights breaking out and the police intervening to educated people storming our offices and violently asking us for money — we’ve dealt with it all,” she said, adding that demonetisation “is revolutionary move that will only strengthen our country”.
The bank employees have also been receiving calls, with people either yelling at them or threatening them to 'move' their money.
“I received a call from a man from a place called Nanded who screamed at me non-stop. He went on yelling, blaming me, cursing in Marathi and I’m sitting there just wondering what I could possibly do,” she said.
“We’ve received dozens of such calls each day. Not just that, but the threats have also come. We get calls from people who are politically endowed and threaten to ‘send media to expose us’ or to ‘create a scene’ if we don’t move money,” she added.
