What I experienced

I am Wewo Kotokay. I want to let other brothers and sisters across the country, and if possible across Melanesia, some basic practices that all of us should be prepared in order to avoid under-service, or non-service when we approach the customer service section of banks in Papua New Guinea.

Number one and the most important one, as for now, is that you have to print your own form, and fill out the form before heading to bank. There are two main reasons for this, the first is that it will shorten your time of filling up the form at the bank.

Average queue time in Papua New Guinea is between 3 hours – 5 hours, from 9:00 AM to 2:00PM. That means when we follow the regular procedure, we will spend more than 30 minutes to fill out the form. Therefore, printing the forms at home helps a lot.

A second reason is, sometimes, the bank runs out of forms, or paper or ink, that will cause you to come the next day or allow you to wait for some hours without explaining to you what is really happening. They mostly choose not to tell you, wait until printer issue is sorted, but then if not sorted, they will be creative in making excuses.

My Suggestion

Banking system across Melanesia is some 30 years behind what we see in Asia, and 40 or 50 years behind what we see in Australia, New Zealand and Europe. It means, we have to act by doing whatever we can do to supplement the weakness of our banking facilities and services.

I know that luxury facilities in banking system are not yet available in PNG and Melanesia, I pray that this will be solved soon.

Please refer to my personal story here