By Umaru Fofana
Growing up I always wanted to work in a bank. By the way things are today one of the places I want to work the least is at a bank. As a child I was so delusional that I thought by working there I would have access to a lot of money. And that all that existed there was nothing but milk and honey.
This illusion was in part because of the literal access the cashiers have to cash in that workplace. But I also thought that a bank worker’s pay had a huge heft and pace. How wrong! I thought that when banks closed at 1:30 pm, the day had ended for the workers, or would be in an hour or two. How wrong! In fact today that is wrong in more ways than one.
As I grew older I got to know that when a bank closed to the public it did not mean work had ended for its staff. They worked up to 4:00 pm and sometimes 5:00 pm. In today’s banking knocking off at 5:00 pm is far more than a pleasure. What should be their entitlement has become for the staff a treasure. It is denied the workers.
Most commercial bank workers have been pushed into subservience by employers who capitalise on the country’s job market being small and narrow and shallow. Employers who take advantage of the fact that neither the government nor the trade union would intervene on behalf of their employees should things go awry for them. What obtains in our banks today in relation to their employees is servitude in all but name.
From Access Bank to Zenith Bank, banks are dotted all over the country. No doubt the banking boom has brought about a few jobs here and there. But the quality of jobs given to Sierra Leoneans is as poor as their working conditions are appalling.
There is no gainsaying that Sierra Leone is an under-banked nation. At the last count, just around ten percent of the population operated a bank account. The number may have appreciated somewhat lately but the vast majority of the people still hardly do any banking transactions, strict senso.
The potential that exists for the banking sector has meant that more and more people are needed by the banks to do the job. Far fewer people have been recruited to do it. Consequently the International Labour Organisation regulation which says that people should work for forty hours a week (eight hours a day and five days a week) has been thrown to the dogs. Most – if not all – of the commercial banks require their staff to report for work at 07:30 or 08:00. In view of the traffic gridlock this means some leave home as early at 06:00. It also means they have to wake up at 05:00.
These workers stay in the office until 11:00 pm. And they work on weekends too. For those who do not have a car of their own – and I suspect they are in the majority – they do not get home until after midnight. So much so that those workers who would otherwise be doing further studies in the evening to improve them capacity cannot do so. They are rewarded no overtime in pay or in man hours or day-offs. I know of especially female staff who have lost their relationships because of this. Under such working conditions they cannot bring up their children the way they should. They get home when the kid is asleep, and leave home before the kid wakes up.
Some are sent out in the streets on marketing. They are set unrealistic targets to get a number of customers far more than the residents in the area.
In all this, for fear that they will be sacked with nowhere to complain, these banking staff suffer in silence without the gumption to take on their employers. The alternative is to speak out and get sacked with nowhere to seek redress, and go without a job. This is the catch 22 situation bank workers in Sierra Leone find themselves in.
In the course of my research for this article, I was told by some of the workers that their personal mobile phones are taken away from them upon entering the office in the morning. And they only get given back after 5:00 pm. An emergency at home they cannot know about let alone respond to. Checking on their loved ones they cannot do. A call that brings a smile to their face amid the stressful work they are denied. If this is not bondage someone please tell me what is.
In all of this tell me what their take home pay is. It is nothing but an amount that barely takes them home. Some are forced into taking loans, especially by the harsh condition of the country’s transport infrastructure and housing conundrum, servicing which takes a huge chunk off their small pay package.
The predicament of bank workers in our country is such that the notion I had when growing up is the feeling of most grownups: you work in a bank therefore you have to have a lot of money. Family pressures are heaped on you. If you do not help solve the myriad of financial problems because you genuinely cannot, family members think you to be unhelpful. When you cannot respond to your basic needs because the pay is not sufficient, hardly does anyone understand or reason with you to bail you out. After all you work in a bank. That is the mentality.
In a bid to responding to fears over the influx of banks into the country, the central bank put in mechanisms – at least on paper and hopefully that has created a firewall – to protect customers. If you need reminding, the experiences from the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International and the International Bank of Trade and Industry (IBTI) are still fresh on the minds of many. While it is good that the customers are being protected, that can hardly be guaranteed if welfare issues of the workers in these banks are not adequately addressed.
We know that in recent times, there have been many cases of some bank staff getting involved with, or even stealing from, customers’ savings. The embarrassment of bringing such to the limelight is what has sometimes led to these banks not prosecuting the thieves but rather just parting company with them. It breeds more thieves in the bank, especially with the appalling conditions under which they work. I can guess far worse may happen if the central bank does not wade in on commercial banks to properly address the inhuman working conditions of their employees, especially the locals.
I know of the saying: “if you think your job is difficult, imagine yourself without a job”. But not when such a job is slavish. That is as much a social issue as it is an economic and security issue. Has anyone bothered to know what happened to the scores, possibly hundreds of account holders at the collapsed Post Office Savings Bank? No one seems inclined to address the situation of those who lost their life savings due to the lack of proper regulation of that institution. I know of a Fullah businessman at Pump Line, who has not maintained his mental balance since that Post Office Savings Bank collapse. Successive ministers have promised them to no realisation. A former staff at the bank who does not wish to be named told me that staff thieving was to blame.
Until the central bank pins its feet down, the bondage that has accompanied the banking boom in the country will have a serious impact on the customers and by extension the nation. So much so that the burst will be so colossal, no one will be spared. Do not say you were not warned.
