FOLLOWING?AN?ARMED?ROBBERY?at its Wildey branch last month, the Barbados National?Bank (BNB) has stepped up its security, managing director and chief executive officer Robert?LeHunte said yesterday.
On Monday, November 22, a man armed with a mock gun made off with several thousand dollars taken from tellers, but no one – customer or staff member – was injured, and the robber was caught swiftly due to the efforts of the Royal Barbados Police Force.
Le Hunte said in a Press statement the bank had ensured that both staff and customers affected by the robbery were provided with counselling to assist with their ability to deal with the emotional and psychological stress of the incident.
The Weekend Nation, of Friday, December 3, reported Director of Public Prosecutions Charles Leacock, QC, as expressing concern about the level of security at the branch based on the perpetrator indicating that he had been told while in jail that the Wildey branch was a particularly easy target.
“BNB has noted these concerns,”?Le Hunte said, “and seeks to assure all stakeholders that security systems are in place to deal with incidents of this nature across the bank’s branch network. Actually, existing security measures worked very well as expected.
“It should be noted that this is my first incident of a robbery in my more than seven-year tenure with BNB. Furthermore, the bank has always been prepared for such an eventuality.
“Additionally, BNB, as a member of a larger regional institution, has drawn on the expertise and experience of its parent institution, Republic Bank Limited, to assist in the mitigation of such eventualities in the future.
“As a matter of course, BNB has enhanced its security measures and has taken every precaution to guard against a recurrence of this incident in the future,” LeHunte said. (PR/AB)
