Paul Nyakazeya
2 October 2008
THE Reserve Bank yesterday suspended the use of Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system as a form of customer payment until further notice.
Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono said the design of the RTGS system was such that payments and inter-account transfers must reflect in the recipients account a few minutes after effecting the payment, but was being abused
"The use of the RTGS system for customer payments is hereby suspended until further notice," said Gono in a statement.
"For the avoidance of doubt there will be no processing of the RTGS payments through the system with effect from Friday October 3," he said.
Gono said the system had become an active vehicle for illicit foreign exchange parallel market dealings, as well as a convenient excuse by sellers of goods to overprice their commodities.
"The victims have largely remained the defenseless members of the public who are having to watch in despair as their hard earned incomes are grabbed away from them through the extractive pricing structure.
"Cognisant to the need to provide liquidity to facilitate settlement of clearing house obligations by financial institutions, all payments from the Reserve Bank to financial institutions and vice versa will continue to be credited to their accounts electronically. These include funding by banks for cash withdrawals," said Gono.
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Who is going to help us the public get redress from these banks? I wrote to the Reserve Bank and got no response.
My story is: I tried to invest my daughter's roora in some Unit Trust. I have asked to deposit the money into the Unit Trust's bank. Because of the amount involved I used an RTGS. Back then, It was taking maximum 48hrs to reflect. My bank showed the transfer had been successful and effective date was the following day. The Unit Trust never got the money and therefore did not give me any units.I started 'fighting with… [Read Full Text]