Dear Editor,
We are upset and angry at the officials from Republic Bank for the shockingly callous treatment of our relatives following the disappearance of G$8 million from the Kitty ATM last weekend.
The uncaring and heartless treatment of these staff is in conflict with the stated Vision and Mission of Republic Bank which states:
Your vision: “The Financial Institution of Choice in the Caribbean for Customers, Staff and Shareholders. We set the Standard of Excellence in Customer Satisfaction, Employee Satisfaction, and Shareholder Value.”
Mission: “Our mission is to provide Personalised, Efficient and competitively priced Financial Services and to Implement Sound Policies which will redound to the benefit of our Customers, Staff and shareholders.’
Following the disappearance of the money from the ATM machine, these staff were interrogated by the bank officials from morning until around 11:00PM.
The bank officials-turned-criminal-investigators did not contact the police until after 11:00PM, even though the image recorded bore no resemblance to any of the staff-turned-theft-suspects.
The Police promptly locked them up with murder accused and other nefarious criminals that entire weekend.
Law abiding, loyal, honest employees, who would have sacrificed for the institution, some with more than close to a decade of dedicated and excellent service, were forced to sleep in cramped, stinking conditions, forced to traverse the limited space bare feet and mothers were denied the opportunity that weekend of being with their babies.
Why were these “ordinary” staff allowed to be deliberately criminalised, and dehumanised in this way?
Why the emotional and subjective decision by the officials to have them locked up over the weekend fully aware that legal representation was well nigh impossible.
I say emotional and subjective because it is highly irrational that these staff would want to tarnish their record after coerced into this department a few months earlier following an earlier disappearance of an even greater magnitude.
Why wasn’t a more comprehensive investigation done by trained specialists in light of the previous theft before these ‘new’ staff were handed over to the police?
We protest this injustice!
Crimes of this sort are normally planned months in advance.
Power requires responsibility and should never be used arbitrarily. Innocent staff cannot be made examples or scapegoats. It doesn’t work that way in modern democratic societies.
You cannot have a situation of “Peter pay for Paul & Paul pay for all” when it comes to people’s character and reputation.
Justice according to Alexander Solzhenitsyn is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognise the voice of their own conscience usually recognise also the voice of justice.
Where were the consciences of the bank officials to recognize that staff that have given close to ten years service to the institution should not be thrown among hardened criminals without any evidence of their involvement.
Back to the vision and mission. The action by the executive betrays the vision and mission of the institution.
How do you see yourself becoming an institution of choice for staff, standard for excellence for employee satisfaction and a mission to implement policies for the benefit of staff when you treat your own in this way?
In view of the above we believe that the management should apologise to these members of staff for the indignity suffered and the trauma experienced on the weekend of 17th February 2007.
As a suggestion we believe that the bank should invest some of its profits in more modern sophisticated controls (maybe look at what the competitors have in place) thus protecting hapless staff in the future from the trauma and needless embarrassment that relatives experienced the last infamous weekend.
Yours faithfully,
Hekima Paul, Carol Marks, Claudette Hollingsworth, Andrea Rodney, Vaulda Roberts, Dawn Cave
Editor’s note
We are sending a copy of this letter to the Republic Bank (Guyana) Limited for any comments they may wish to make.