Bankers Association wants police to intensify crackdown on ABM vandals

   

The Jamaica Bankers Association has called for the Police High Command to intensify its crackdown on hoodlums who have been vandalising Automated Banking Machines (ABMs).

 

This follows the theft of a National Commercial Bank ABM in Longville Park, Clarendon on the weekend.

 

Radio Jamaica News was informed that the hoodlums also attacked and vandalised a Jamaica National ABM in Clarendon on the night of Hurricane Beryl last Wednesday.

 

Radio Jamaica News was informed that the thieves only got $26,000 from the vault of the NCB machine which was later recovered in the Sandy Bay area.

 

In an interview with Radio Jamaica News on Monday afternoon, President of Jamaica Bankers Association, Audrey Tugwell Henry, warned that the surge in vandalism will affect services to banking customers.

 

"When we have ATMs at risk, we have to shut those ATMs down, we have to remove the cash from those ATMs. And for as long as the risk exists that criminal element will be attacking ATMs in these troubled areas and these remote areas, we will have no option but to remove the cash. And so our clients and the Jamaican public will be impacted if they cannot access ABM services in these remote areas. So, I'm calling on all stakeholders to work with the industry to contain criminality in the country," she pleaded. 

 

The police suspect that a gang operating in Clarendon was behind the attacks on the banking machines.