The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) corps members using Zenith Bank Plc to receive their monthly allowances have yet to be paid for the month of September by the bank, PIJAlance learnt.
This is coming at the time when the service of the commercial bank had been marred with transaction lag since the 1st of October across the country, leaving customers lamenting disruptions on social media.
Zenith Bank, had on September 28 circulated a circular, detailing that the commercial bank would have what it called “routine maintenance” of all its facilities.
The maintenance was to commence on September 29 and end by Tuesday, October 01, 2024.
The circular partly contained, “Please be informed that we are currently undertaking a routine maintenance of our Information Technology Infrastructure, to enable us significantly improve the quality of service rendered to you.
“From Sunday, September 29 to Tuesday, October 01, 2024, our Mobile Banking App, USSD Service, Internet Banking and Corporate Internet Banking platforms will be unavailable between the hours of 12:01am and 05:00am WAT on the above dates.
“We solicit your understanding and offer our assurances that measures are in place to minimize any service interruptions during the exercise.”
Despite the elapse of its circulated date for maintenance which the bank had said would make all its services not available, six days, corps members, alongside other customers, are still lamenting on social media for service disruptions.
While corps members lamented the delayed payment of their monthly allowances for September despite the disbursement of the funds since October 2nd. Other customers keep decrying the bank over their inability to use all its services.
According to a user named Osa Director on X (formerly Twitter), Zenith Bank uses its infrastructure upgrade to downgrade customers’ businesses. This, he likened to being solely confined by the commercial bank’s network upgrade which has led to losses. He wrote on October 05, “for over one week transactions are held hostage by their network upgrade. Who will pay for the losses suffered by high net worth customers and corporate organizations for the affected period?”
Another user, OG Waheedi wrote “Zenith Bank has not worked for almost a week now and almost certain (sic) nothing has happened to their stock price lol.”
A corps member also on X with the username, Francis Ikuerowo, rued that the N33,000 monthly allowances have been individually received by all the corps members except those using Zenith Bank.
Ikuerowo said the commercial bank has made the time “tough” with the delay of the allowances, hitherto. “33k NYSC allawee wey other corpers don receive, spend finish, some corpers like me with Zenith Bank never receive and today Na October 6. If this is not a tough time, I don’t know what else to call it,” the corps member wrote.
Meanwhile, some other corps members have written to Zenith Bank via emails, demanding the payment of their allowances already disbursed since Tuesday, October 02.
According to Okunlola Testimony, who is one of the corps members that wrote to Zenith Bank via email, the delay of the monthly allowance payment by Zenith Bank has affected “a lot of things”. Testimony wrote Zenith Bank via email on different occasions, demanding the payment.
“My NYSC allowee of N33,000 paid since about 2 days ago has not reflected on my account balance. Kindly assist with it,” Testimony had written on October 4. Subsequently, he pestered, laying demands on the payment. However, Zenith Bank has yet to make the payment. “It’s been more than 48 hours and I’ve not yet seen my money. Please do something about this as soon as possible. It’s really affecting a lot of things,” he added.
Several attempts made to speak with the commercial bank’s representative were proven futile. While PIJAlance was unable to get in touch with its Public Relations Officer, its available call centre lines did not connect to any of its representatives. At multiple trials, only the machine tone routinely asks “are you still there?” while repeating the same recorded tone.
Read Also: Why Corps Members Are Paid N33k Instead of N77k new increase, DG Explains
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