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Banks urged to
upgrade security
By JULIA DAIA BORE
BANKS in Papua New Guinea have been urged to make concerted efforts to
improve and upgrade their security technologies to better ensure and
safeguard their business.
The chairman of the Commercial Bankers Association and managing director
of the ANZ Banking Group of PNG Garry Tunstall made the remarks in
support of the Bank of South Pacific (BSP) CEO Garth McIlwain, who has
also called on better security policing of the sector by the police
force.
Mr McIlwain also said that increasing insecurity for his bank workers
could result in him closing down some of PNG’s BSP bank branches, if he
had to.
BSP is PNG’s leading bank and also serves Fiji, Niue and Solomon Islands
(SI) with 43 branches throughout the Pacific – 36 in PNG, five in SI,
one in Fiji and one in Niue.
Mr Tunstall said part of these security procedures that should be
pursued by all commercial banks was to ensure that safe combinations
held by any bank officer should automatically be inaccessible after
banking hours.
These should also include time locks to automatically lock out
accessibility into the bank’s important facilities areas, he said.
Mr Tunstall said his ANZ Banking group had such sound safety mechanism,
where with the close of banking hours, all accessibility into bank safes
and bank perimeters is automatically closed to all, including senior
bank officers.
He said such up-to-date technology mechanism was highly necessary and
urged all commercial banks to install these systems for their own bank’s
safety.
The bank chiefs’ remarks followed the kidnap of Maybank officers
culminating in the theft of about K500,000.
Three senior bank officers were kidnapped and while putting them under
duress, bank safe combinations were taken off them and used to steal
money.
Mr Tunstall said the kidnapping of another commercial bank’s senior
officers last weekend to get the bank’s safe combinations “was certainly
a serious concern to us as banking providers,” he said, “particularly,
when it involved senior bank officers who were put through a lot of
duress for the theft of the cash.”
He said it was not a very good thing for any human being to go through.
Mr Tunstall also said policing of all sectors by police must be stepped
up to ensure security is ensured for all, including the banks.
Commander for NCD and Central command Assistant Commissioner Alfred Reu
yesterday confirmed that the robbery at Maybank was reported to the
police and his detectives were working on the case.
He said it was unfortunate that the incident at the Maybank happened,
while most of his men were currently being deployed on elections duties.
Attempts to get comments from Maybank were unsuccessful.
 
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