ITANAGAR, Apr 16: Having evidently misread the news headlined ‘Bankruptcy rumour lands…’, etc, which was published in the 14 April edition of this daily, the Apex Bank’s Naharlagun-based head office on Thursday issued a clarification, terming the report filed by our correspondent “baseless and without any iota of truths.”
“There is sufficient fund available with the AP State Cooperative Apex Bank and not a bankruptcy as reported which gave a wrong message among our customer,” Apex Bank Managing Director Tsering Thongdok said.
He went on to add that the bank has substantially improved over the years and has “deposit of Rs 377 crore as on 12.04.2020 which is all time records.
“The bank has also recovered more than Rs 34 crore during 2019-20,” he said.
Thongdok said the state and central governments recently disbursed “huge funds related to MGNREGA and other relief measures” to combat Covid-19. “Due to this, a large number of customers visited Miao branch of the Apex bank to withdraw their deposits which lead to misunderstanding of crisis in the bank,” Thongdok said.
At a time when the whole state is fighting Covid-19, the Apex Bank is providing not only regular banking services “as essential item” throughout the state but is also providing banking services through mobile ATM and micro ATM services, he said.
“The Apex Bank is fully confident and committed to become one of the most reliable banks for the public in the days to come,” the MD added.
However, our correspondent had not made any unequivocal statement in his report that the bank was facing bankruptcy. He had clearly said that there was a “rumour” among the bank’s customers in Miao to the effect that the bank was on the verge of bankruptcy, which had led to the customers flocking its Miao branch to withdraw their savings.
A part of the report read: ‘Even though Branch Manager DN Thakur tried his best to convince the villagers that the rumour was false, not a single customer paid heed to it and the branch had to release their money.’
That the incident did occur is clear from the branch manager’s statement.
“The villagers will not be getting the interest and many accounts will be closed as most of them left with no balance in their bank accounts,” the manager had told our correspondent.
