WIDESPREAD vandalism of cash machines is setting back Jamaica’s post-hurricane banking recovery by “three to six months” in some communities, the country’s banking association president said on Friday, exacerbating a paralysing network collapse that has left most machines outside the capital offline and transaction volumes billions of dollars below normal levels.

The assessment from Audrey Tugwell Henry, who is also president and CEO of Scotiabank Jamaica, underscores a severe, man-made challenge complicating efforts to restore financial normalcy after Hurricane Melissa ripped through the island early last week. She confirmed that a Scotiabank automated banking machine (ABM) was ripped out in St Mary and that screens on two machines belonging to CIBC were smashed by thieves.

“Persons stealing, looting, trying to rip out ABMs. That does not help,” Tugwell Henry told the Jamaica Observer Friday in between meetings dealing with efforts to restore banking services across the island in the aftermath of the hurricane.

“Between theft and vandalism, it has really negatively impacted the ABM network,” she continued. “We’re asking for vigilance from the communities and support in reporting any attempts that they’re seeing,” Tugwell Henry said. “We also need to sensitise community members that taking out their frustration and banging on an ABM screen sets the community back by three to six months.”

She warned that replacing a single vandalised machine is a lengthy process that deprives an entire area of essential financial access.

“Banks don’t buy and stock ABMs in large quantities to just flip out one and put in another one immediately,” Tugwell Henry explained. “Physically and operationally, that community is going to be out of commission for months until that happens.”

The criminal activity is crippling a network already brought to its knees by a widespread collapse of power and telecommunications. Edmundo Jenez, CEO of JETS, the operator of the MultiLink network which connects various banks’ ABMs and point-of-sale systems, provided data showing recovery rates outside of the capital region remain dire.

His figures painted a stark picture of the island’s fractured financial access. As of Friday, key parishes were facing a near-total blackout of services from ABMs with access to the MultiLink network. Only 13.5 per cent of machines were in service in St Elizabeth, while Trelawny was at 19 per cent and Westmoreland at 22.2 per cent. Even parishes with moderate damage were struggling, with St Mary at 45.8 per cent of ABMs in service and St James at 44.8 per cent. This stands in sharp contrast to the capital, where Kingston and St. Andrew were at 81.7 per cent and 88.7 per cent recovery, respectively.

Jenez explained that the MultiLink system exists to serve the “convenience gap”, allowing customers to use the nearest machine regardless of their bank. Its paralysis means that even in areas where a single ABM survives, it cannot serve the broader community that depends on the interconnected network.

The paralysis of the cash machine network and digital payment infrastructure has had a direct and severe impact on economic activity. Jenez said transaction volume for the month through Oct 30 was approximately $35.38 billion, significantly below the $41.85 billion recorded in the same period last year — a shortfall of over $6.4 billion that highlights the hurricane’s stifling effect on the flow of money.

Still, amid the twin crises of vandalism and infrastructure failure, Tugwell Henry outlined a coordinated, multi-tiered effort by the banking sector to restore services.

“First of all our individual institutions are meeting [discussing] recovery, restoration and so on, restoring business to normalcy as far as possible,” she said. “Then we have been meeting as an association and assessing impact and where we are and putting structures in place to continue business.”

This was followed by a critical meeting with the central bank. “We have some takeaway action items from that meeting,” she confirmed, highlighting the strategic priority of ensuring cash reaches the most impacted areas. “One of our action items is to see how we can support cash in the areas where all of those systems are down,” she told Sunday Finance.

A key obstacle to these restoration efforts, however, is the sector’s heavy reliance on the island’s main telecommunications providers, which were severely compromised by the hurricane.

“Satellite is not broadly used as a means of communication in our sector,” Tugwell Henry explained, referring to systems like Starlink. “It’s still fairly new to the country, and so that’s not something that as an industry, our branches and locations use broadly. Basically we use Flow and Digicel. When Flow and Digicel are disrupted, it impacts the operations of the financial sector broadly speaking.”

This dependency creates a single point of failure, crippling everything from branch transactions to digital banking. “The system is working, but clients have to have connectivity to be able to tap into the system,” she said, outlining the core challenge. “So those are some of the challenges that we’re looking at. What can be restored and how can we restore it in the impacted areas?”

She noted that while many branches have generator power, their ability to serve customers is entirely contingent on this telecoms link being restored. “The big thing that we’re dealing with obviously is power and communication,” she said. “It drives a lot of our business, even at the branch level, because the branches have to be able to communicate with the host to facilitate transactions.”

To keep the public informed, Tugwell Henry said the Jamaica Bankers’ Association, “is also going to sort of shed some light and put a statement out around the industry and some of the challenges that people can expect and some of the things that we’re doing as an industry to alleviate and get back to normalcy”.

Audrey Tugwell Henry, president of the Jamaica Bankers Association, warns that vandalism of ABMs is setting back community recovery by “three to six months” in the wake of Hurricane Melissa..