Teachers complain on ECO-Bank Sierra Leone
One among the banks in Sierra Leone which claimed to be a pan African bank and a leading bank in Sierra Leone has been caught in underhand games with customer’s accounts.
Eco-Bank has long since locked horns with head teachers in terms of their school fee subsidies money issued by the government to fast track payments of subventions for the effective running of the school activities.
According to the chairman for Council of Head Teachers in Sierra Leone, Mr. Bosco Ado, for a long period now his school heads have made this complaint to the relevant authorities at the Ministry of Education Science and Technology that Eco-Bank is eating school fee subsidies at any deposit government is making.
He alleged that each month, Eco-Bank deducts Le 50,000 from school accounts even if there is no money in the accounts.
Chairman of Council of Head Teachers said some schools with low numbers of pupil’s enrolled, at times withdraw nothing because Eco-Bank is deducting the money for the rest of the year.
Mr. Ado maintained that if the government fails to put financial measures in place, Eco-Bank is no doubt in dubious acts with their monies that will lead to a serious problem between his teachers and the bank. He said, very soon he would write to all heads of schools to close their accounts with Eco-Bank.
In a subsequent investigation, one regular businessman made a similar comment against Eco-Bank in terms of tampering with customer’s accounts which he said he has been a victim of on several occasions. He showed monies deposited in his account which he sensed Eco-Bank did not post to his previous balance. He also called on the appropriate authorities to seriously check Eco-Bank.
When this press and colleagues reached the Kenema Eco-Bank branch Manager Desmond Kanu, he said: “Yes it was true that they deducted money from teachers’ accounts for maintenance, but will stop such acts very soon.” Asked why the bank deducts such amounts from the account on a monthly basis and even when there is no money lodged into the accounts of the teachers, he said he was not going to disclose that information to the press on the basis that it was a classified information which their legal counsel is the right person to handle that.
By Kamal M. Barrie, Kenema
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