Dear Editor,

National Commercial Bank (NCB) has recently upgraded its Christiana Branch, making way for closure of the Spalding Branch in the parish of Clarendon. This so-called bright idea to close the Spalding Branch was claimed as a solution for time consumption at the bank, improvement of customer services, and to encourage greater use of the 24-hour banking system for the parishes of Manchester and Clarendon.

Now, this accelerated move has generated another problem on the streets in Christiana, with the ‘importation’ of people out of Clarendon now joining with customers of north-east Manchester to access other financial institutions and remittance agencies such as Western Union, MoneyGram, Jamaica National, and Scotiabank Jamaica (BNS) to cause further traffic congestion on a daily basis. Was this really a solution to the problem?

Now NCB has filtered its customers from the interior of the bank to the outside into the streets with long, very slow-moving lines and called it a solution to the novel coronavirus pandemic; business protection for its customers, they say.

In addition, the closure of the NCB Spalding Branch has become a liability to customers, especially to those who use public transportation, incurring additional expenses for travelling from Clarendon to Manchester to do deposits and withdrawals on a daily basis. Why not provide the business community and personal customers of the Spalding environs with full-service ABMs?

Reggae artistes Nas and Damian Marley aka Junior Gong were right when they sang in the song Patience: “Are we growing wiser, are we just growing tall?”

Ricardo Spaulding

Ticky Ticky District

Coleyville PO, Manchester

spauldingricardo@gmail.com