By Tony Edike
BANKING services were paralysed in Okigwe, Imo State yesterday as workers in the nine banks operating in the town embarked on a five-day warning strike to protest incessant armed robbery attacks on the banks.

Customers who went to the banks for normal banking services were disappointed throughout yesterday as the doors of all the banks operating in the town were closed  with a notice that they would not operate during the working days of this week.

A member of Okigwe City Bank Managers’ Forum who spoke with Vanguard on telephone on condition of anonymity,  confirmed that the warning strike was declared by the forum to protest the recurring armed robbery attacks on the banks in Okigwe which have lost several millions of naira in recent times.

He recalled what he described as the worst incidence of bank robbery involving nine banks in the town on April 21, this year during which seven persons including a staff of one of the banks were killed and a huge amount of money carted away without any meaningful intervention by security agencies.

He said:  “We held a meeting last week and came out with a communiqué asking both the Federal and Imo State Government to beef up security in Okigwe to enable us continue with our operation.   We had a terrible experience on April 21, 2010 where all the nine banks in Okigwe were attacked and several millions of naira were lost.  A staff of one of the banks and six others were killed in that incident.

“Since that April 21, we have been operating under serious robbery scare; we close shops about three times a week for fear of robbery attack while customers no longer come to the banks.  That is why we have embarked on the strike to press home our demand for the government to beef up security in the area.”

According to the spokesman of the forum, who is a Branch Manager of a new generation bank, the banks have among other things demanded the deployment of Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) and no fewer than 1,000 members of Police Anti-Robbery Squad to Okigwe to protect the banks from further robbery attack.

He said that the five_day warning strike which commenced yesterday might be extended if nothing meaningful was done to address the security problem in the town, lamenting that the robbery scare has made it impossible for the banks to smoothly render  services to their customers.

The forum noted with regrets that two of the banks operating in Okigwe namely GTB and Intercontinental have closed their branches following the April 21 robbery attack, adding that the management s of other banks were on the verge of doing same if nothing was done to beef up security in the town.

Meanwhile, reports said some bank customers who could not access services at Okigwe on account of the strike went to other neighbouring towns like Umuahia and Owerri for banking transaction while the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) centers in the town were overcrowded by customers.It would be recalled that two new generation banks operating at  Nsukka and Obollo_Affor both in Enugu State, had recently closed their branches over fear of armed robbery attack having suffered huge losses in previous robbery incidents.