By Manyang Mayom

March 13, 2009 (RUMBEK) — The manager of Kenya Commercial Bank’s (KCB) branch office in Rumbek of Southern Sudan’s Lakes state has said that a new bank building will open in early April this year with excellent services for Lakes state communities. The new KCB branch building is erected with glass panes.

KCB branch manager Rodgers Mwema (R) and ST journalist Manyang mayom pose at the new building in Rumbek (photo Manyang Mayom)

In the meantime, KCB Sudan’s Rumbek branch office has been working since 2007 from rented space at the AFEX compound in Lakes state. The manager, Rodgers Mwema, affirms that over 20,000 customers now have an account with the branch and indeed the bank management would aim to recruit more customers if the new building opens in April.

According to Mwema, the KCB Sudan branch is trying hard to invest in the Sudan to educate the young generation about the banking system instead of leaving people to keep their money at home. In an interview on Thursday, he said that they have to transform from that system of home banking into an actual banking system because the bank is the most secure place to store money.

Taking a step in this direction, the KCB Rumbek branch office will open in April, he said, if its building will have come to completion. He also noted that the bank is going to make available a nice system called Automated Teller Machine card (ATM card), which allows one to withdraw one’s money anytime instead of having to talk to a manager or follow long procedural steps for withdrawal that can take hours.

“KCB’s new building will work 24-hours per day using ATM cards. The new building will serve all individual people whether disabled people or whomsoever has an account with KCB; the new bank building holds seven tellers chairs including a teller of disabled people plus two auto-teller machines outside the bank,” said Mwema.

Kenya Commercial Bank was registered in Southern Sudan in 2006 by the region’s semi-autonomous government, and it has two branches within Juba as well as a branch in each of the towns of Yei, Rumbek and Bentiu, while it plans to open branches in all ten states of Southern Sudan, according to Mwema.

It is the second bank that has opened in Southern Sudan following only the Nile Commercial Bank (NCB), which opened in early 2003 after Southern Sudan’s former rebel movement SPLM/A reconciled with the Khartoum government in peace talks held in Kenya. Rumbek’s KCB branch is served by seven staffs comprising three Kenyan nationals and four Sudanese.

Mwema said that KCB Rumbek branch is also ready to give personal loans to her customers: “We have given more loans to our clients since we formed an agreement with local government employees who made an account with us.”

Urging people to keep savings in the bank, branch manager Mwema said that “I felt regret when the incident occurred in Rumbek last year in September — the shooting that wounded seven people during forcible disarmament that resulted in looting of civilian money, mobile phones and material properties in Rumbek — that is the bad consequence of keeping money at home. If you do keep your money in the bank there will be nothing to harm your amount.”

(ST)