Giridih, Feb. 18: A spate of bank robberies has put a question mark on the viability of operating branches in the rural areas of Giridih district. The bank employees have also started feeling insecure and fear to work in the rural branches.

Bank sources said there had been two bank robberies within a month in banks operating in the rural areas of Giridih. Punjab National Bank’s Daridih branch was robbed of more than Rs 3 lakh recently. Another robbery took place in Chetriya Gramin Bank’s Shrirampur branch.

Though the police have arrested the robbers, it has become clear that the criminals were targeting the rural bank branches.

Bank sources said there were 30 branches of Bank of India and 18 of Chetriya Gramin Bank in the rural areas of Giridih. There are 27 branches of State Bank of India in the district, out of which 20 are in the rural and seven in the urban areas respectively.

The government has made it mandatory for every bank to set up rural branches.

The sources said that because of the rise in the robberies, the rural bank branches were losing heavily apart from facing other problems.

The government insisted upon operating banks in rural areas to harness the savings and benefit the villagers. However, due to the frequent robberies and lack of security the banks started maintaining low cash reserves in the branches, which began to affect operations.

For instance, if a village customer wants to withdraw a large amount from his account, he has to wait for the cash to arrive from a larger branch in the nearest urban centre. At times, the wait stretched for hours, which led to the villagers wanting to open their accounts in urban branches, defeating the very purpose of rural banking.