Cash shortage forces Zimbabweans to sleep outside banks

Zimbabwe’s cash shortages has reached alarming levels with people being forced to sleep in queues outside banks in an effort to secure cash from their accounts.

The southern Africa nation uses the US dollar as its currency after the local currency Zim Dollar was scrapped in 2008 due to hyperinflation.

However in the past months cash shortages have hit Zimbabwe after the government threatened to grab all foreign companies operating in the country under the Indigenisation and Empowerment Law.

The cash shortages has seen banks in Zimbabwe reducing withdrawal bank limits for customers to as low as US$40 per day per individual.

This has led to hundreds of ordinary Zimbabweans sleeping outside banks daily to get the much needed cash.

“Things are really bad. As you can see we slept outside the bank because we want our money. We came here last night and we are still here, and after all this, we are just going to be given a small amount which is not enough. This is not fair,” says Maria Nyakapa.

Zimbabwe’s government has in the meantime started plans to introduce Bond Notes in an effort to ease the cash shortages.

But Zimbabwean economists, opposition parties and civic society groups are against the introduction
of the Bond Notes and warn it will further destroy the
country’s economy.