A Kadir Jasin
THE atomic men (and women) are dying; killed by
the advancing digital age. The faceless, robotic digital men (and women) are
taking over.
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| Human beings are becoming slaves to machines |
The human tellers are being phased out and
replaced by the electronic ones. Automatic teller machines (ATMs) now occupy
the front office once manned human beings.
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The atomic men (and women) are told that their passbooks
and cheques are being phased out. Their monthly bills are no longer posted to them. Go online, they're told.
Even the Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB), which
is supposed to serve the poor and the downtrodden, had gone online banishing the
trusty passbooks to the garbage bins.
I damned those heartless, uncaring digital men
and women at PNB as I damned the rabid dogs. I gave them a middle finger.
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| I keep my trusty passbook & enter transactions manually |
I ask them this question. Who are the big, loyal
investors of the Amanah Saham Bumiputera (ASB) – the passbook generation or the
computer savvy crowd?
Thankfully, my lady banker is a gem of a woman.
I have known her for decades and my accounts follow her wherever she is transferred. We
literally grow old together. Of course she’s a lot younger than I am.
The future is uncertain for an atomic man like
me. A personable banker like her is becoming harder to find as managers and
clerks become more attuned to treating customers as mere numbers and passwords.
I am from a generation that treasure human
touch. We deal with humans. At this advanced age, I have no intention of
becoming slave to teller machines and recorded human voice telling me which
button to press.
I started banking back in the 1960’s with the Post
Office Savings Banks (POSB) that required me to buy stamps whenever I wanted to
put in more money into my account.
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| Deposits were made using stamps |
Those days, as a remnant of the British legacy,
post office clerks had beautiful English style handwriting – clear and legible.
Today very few people have beautiful handwriting.
As a young reporter working for Bernama and
later the New Straits Times, going to the old Bank Bumiputra at Jalan Melaka in
Kuala Lumpur was something to look forward to.
It was not just about the money but the
expectation of being served by the young and sexy counter clerk by the name of
Azean Irdawaty who would later plunged
into the acting world and went on to become an accomplished performer.
With some banks and investment companies so
rudely sidelining atomic customers like me, I am now in a crusade against
unabated, uncaring digitization of banking and investment services.
I am now on the way to closing down accounts
that require me to go totally digital and transferring them to where humans
still provide the service.
Atomic men and women let’s not get deleted. Let’s
demand our right to exist as body and soul, and not as mere numbers and
passwords.
Wallahuaklam.
