Safeguarding Mutual Wealth!

Revelations that hoodlums are increasingly manipulating information on bank cards and defrauding the owners of scarce liquidity in the country is, to say the least, disquieting. The introduction of cards in banking operations in Cameroon, like elsewhere, was hailed as a ground-breaking innovation that has been benefitting both the financial institutions and their clients. In effect, the novelty gave the population the opportunity to withdraw money from their accounts at will with little or no difficulty. It equally reduced long queues at bank counters and more importantly curtailed people-to-people contacts that are never void of ungentlemanly practices. Cases where unscrupulous bank officials allegedly connived with bandits to drain customers who cashed out huge sums have been minimised. Even now, the use of bank cards saves many bank users from contracting the nagging Covid-19 pandemic.  
It is detestable that ill-intentioned people now hijack the system with malicious operations that inflict heavy financial losses on the population and the different banking structures. Placing cameras or other information-catching devices in teller machines to fraudulently pick vital information from customers’ cards is simply ingenuity from the wrong side. Financial losses from the unholy practices is said to be in billions. A great harm for people and their economy!
The disturbing phenomenon has the tendency to push back many who were already embracing the banking sector to shrink and resort to keeping money at home with all its socio-economic consequences. Efforts by governments and sub-regional institutions like the Bank of Central African States (BEAC) to step up the rate of population adherence to banking operations are seriously threatened in the wave of growing money theft through the fraudulent use of bank cards. That the integrity of banking institutions is dented here needs no emphasis again. 
The golden book teaches that, “where one’s wealth is, so lies his/her heart.” Difficult for the heart to be tranquil when the security of the hard-earned money is not guaranteed like the case with the trending bad practices. Something therefore needs to be done and urgently too.
Even as the banks go for othe...