Prime
Banking institutions should have restrooms for customers
Vivian Namale
What you need to know:
- This is unfair. We would not want to witness scenarios of clients getting embarrassed and humiliated in public. I believe you all appreciate my point. It is no petty issue actually, it is a serious health concern that ought to be addressed.
- Banks are clearly mistreating their clients. I find it impracticable for the ‘’esteemed customers’’ as banks call them, to have to dash in the middle of a transaction to look for the nearest washrooms outside the banking hall when nature calls.
It’s a fine afternoon at one of the prime and busiest banks around Kampala, Diamond Trust Bank, that is. A number of customers are standing in long queues inside the huge banking hall. This is an institution offering different services to customers, including but not limited to cash withdrawals, deposits and loan applications.
As I await to be served in one of the queues, nature calls and I apprehend the need to make use of the restrooms. So I pull over and approach one bank staff with a polite question, “Where could one find the restrooms for customers?’’ and she confidently responds “the restrooms available are for our staff only, we do not have public restrooms for customers!’’
She literally refused to let me use the restrooms irrespective of the fact that I was a customer and that I had clearly explained my desperate condition. I was dazed!
This was the point at which I noticed the requisite need for these places of convenience at our banking institutions. I felt compelled to conduct a mini survey and sadly, discovered that many established and magnificent financial institutions with several branches in the country do not avail restrooms to their customers, a situation I personally found alarming.
It is rare to find a labelled door at a banking hall that leads one to customers’ restrooms. The same are usually privately available for bank staff only.
Honestly, I do not think clients need to plead with bank staff to use restrooms. One bank employee mentioned that they were always willing to let desperate customers use the restrooms as and when they needed to, but one cannot assume that this is always the case.
It might as well depend on the temperaments of the bank staff. And well, unlike my confident self, not every customer would have the boldness to openly ask in public to have such a service or even confront a bank staff for the same.
Further more, how often can these bank employees bear offering the service and “being nice’’ given the number of clients that visit the banks on a daily?
There is this shared rationale of security concerns and customers only spending limited time at the banking institutions, which I do not find feasible as this is not always the case.
Clients do sometimes queue for longer hours than usual at the various banks irrespective of the fact that there are always a number of tellers to attend to them. With respect to security concerns, checks made at the entrance would somewhat suffice.
In my opinion, it is unfair for banks not to provide restrooms for their clients and it is always wrong to assume that clients would not need to use them as they wait to be served.
Some customers have ailments that might require frequent use of washrooms, say diabetes, prostate problems, overactive bladder syndrome, not ignoring pregnant women.
We would not want to witness scenarios of clients getting embarrassed and humiliated in public. I believe you all appreciate my point. It is no petty issue actually, it is a serious health concern that ought to be addressed.
Banks are clearly mistreating their clients. I find it impracticable for the ‘’esteemed customers’’ as banks call them, to have to dash in the middle of a transaction to look for the nearest washrooms outside the banking hall when nature calls.
Countries like Kenya have put this need into consideration. Kenya of recent issued a directive for all supermarkets, banks and all public and private institutions to provide free sanitation facilities to their customers, failure of which such institutions risked closure.
Our dearest government ought to follow suit. Banks should also take the matter of public toilets into consideration while renting premises. We should perhaps make provision of restrooms for customers part and parcel of the legal requirements for banks to operate.
Customers make great contribution to the annual revenues of these financial institutions and these should go with excellent customer services too. Why should we let them take lack of restrooms for customers as a petty issue?
I mean, banks have made strides in putting customer service at the forefront of their operations over the years hence this issue also needs to be addressed in equal measure. I gather it is a necessary evil!
Ms Namale is a lawyer.
[email protected]
