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+--- Thread: SBP NEW COMPLAINT CELL (/thread-sbp-new-complaint-cell)
SBP NEW COMPLAINT CELL - javed - 02-04-2008
This 31 January 2008 morning on TV screen in print form I saw a small item that State Bank of Pakistan has established a special Consumer Complaints Cell. Due to my eye sight problem I could not properly read and remember the exact words but Consumer Cell was clear. I am confident in SBP there must had been some new recruitment applications to accommodate hence need for this new cell. These complaint cells, hot complaint cells, super complaint cells, web complaint centres, are formed only to provide jobs to some dear ones. For example PTCL on huge cost and more on print/electronic expensive propaganda a few years back created an Online Central Complaint Cell in Islamabad. After much was spent on costly equipment from some âspecialâ suppliers and posting people, the this Centre since more than a year has disappeared in as much as even the contact emails of the General Managers and Head Office seniors have been deleted. In todayâs newspaper there is a letter from a subscriber that his email complaints to concerned General Managers on email contact addresses given on phone bills are coming back with systemâs remarks that the mail addresses were wrong. I can quote stories of dozen and dozen of other such Complaint Cells. SBP never had and never will have any practical interest for the majority of consumers. Concerning increasing complaints about late receipt at home remittances from Pakistani labour abroad, once I read an article stating that in the Foreign Exchange Branches in the sea of twenty or forty digit figures a three or four digit figure amount of these labourers does not catch the attention of staff there. Likewise for SBP the real domestic savers namely saving account holders etc have no importance hence it hardly ever touches or attends to any complaint from an ordinary account holder. SBP like SECP is in fact protector of rights of business community preferably.
Recently I lodged a complaint with the Banking Mohtasib against a Bank that the Bank had violated Pakistanâs prescribed rule so and so. I quoted the specific rule â a rule which two decades back on my own raising the issue was re-circulated by the Federal Government as a refresher. The Banking Mohtasib informed me that the said bank was not obliged to observe my quoted government rule. It was strange for me that our foreign investors in banking above Pakistan Law. This was more surprising for me because a few years earlier SBP had stated that now a foreign converted bank still was under its control but now the banking mohtasib a subsidy of the same SBP was saying the bank was over and above that written law. I enquired this from SBP if it was correct that foreign Banks were above observing that rule of Pakistan. The auto generated receipt of SBP Online Web told me within 48 hours someone from its Banking Control Department will contact me. Many 48 hours passed by. Then I again enquired to get same reply within 48 hours someone will revert back to me. More than twenty-five 48 hours have elapsed but this consumer has not received any response because SBPâs 48 hours have not passed. The clock of SBP perhaps is special like similar to that that under which âsoonâ Pakistan will become a Hong Kong. The Federal Ombudsman well appreciably from 1983 to approximately 1995 heard complaints against Banks. I have an appreciable record of some decisions it made for ordinary account holders. For example on my complaint the Federal Ombudsman introduced my drafted new account opening Form for all banks in 1990 and even changed some provision of Foreign Exchange Rules. Then on a huge cost a web complaint cell was created in SBP which to me proved only for job providing to some. This complaint cell produced only auto generated response of 48 hours which 48 hours never end. Then was created the banking mohtasib on huge expense which under the silent lips was to say that in the eyes of SBP the Federal Ombudsman and its own web complaint cell had failed hence need for a banking mohtasib. Now a new consumer complaint cell in SBP in simple interpretation is an admission by SBP that even on huge continued expense its created banking mohtasib has failed to redress âconsumersâ frustrations hence now this new cell. By end this year there would be some more dear ones and I suggest for the next such technique the next new cell be named âAccount Holders Complaints Cellâ and so.