Sri Lanka banking operations disrupted by power cuts

Sri Lanka’s banking operations have been greatly affected by the fuel crisis and long-hour (10-13 hour) power cuts, the Ceylon Bank’s Employees Union (CBEU) warned.

Banking automated activities would be paralysed soon as the computer systems cannot be operated owing to lack of fuel to run generators during power cuts, Secretary of the CBEU Ranjan Senanayake said. His comments came just before the government on Sunday reduced the power cut to 1.5 hours but it was unclear whether these reduced hours would be maintained in the next few days or whether the hours of the power cut would increase.

The operation of ATM’s countrywide will also be affected under the present situation and this will in turn disrupt financial transactions of bank account holders numbering around 15 million.

These ATMS are inactivated in the night to conserve fuel for power generators at present he said adding that banking operations of a large number of bank branches have already come to standstill.

Most of the banks Internet were down causing interruptions to its services while broad band users facing a downtime or slow Internet due to a downtime in Internet Structure, a senior telecom engineer said adding that the power cuts affected the work from home arrangements as well.