In the most civil way, as opposed to the conventional resort to the adversarial court system, Wanyana Emmanuel, a law student of Uganda Pentecostal University has written a letter to the director in charge of reguation of Commercial Banks at the Bank of Uganda complaining about bank charges on tuition and school fees deposits.
His letter which was dated 1st February 2019 was received by BOU on the 4th February, and a copy was also served to the parliament of Uganda, through COSASE.
Wanyana asks three questions, the subject of his letter.
Wanyama does not indicate what tariffs guides he is referring to however, when you read for example the “Interest Rates and BankCharges for personal accounts as at January 1, 2018” published bythe BOU, the charge on cash deposits on accounts shall be “Nil”.Tuition and school fees payments are deposits on the schoolaccounts, which by implication, would not require the payment ofbank charges.
“Under which law do commercial banks derive the authority to levy bank charges between 2200 and 3000…”. He also wants to know why, if the charge is legal, would it be left to subsist “contrary to the doctrine of privity of contract”. Privity of contract is a contractual term that demands that one can only enjoy the benefits of a contract, if they were party to the contrary. He does not expect banks to charge him when he does not have have any banker-customerrelationship with the bank.
In his third follow up question, he asks what basis do the banks have to levy bank charges on tuition and school fees because it varies from bank to bank.
His background for the complaint is that he was charged shs. 2,200 for every deposit he made to his school account at United Bank of Africa.
The letter ends with a threat where the students says would “assemble and unleash the bulldozer weapons” against those bankswhich he calls culprits.
Campus Bee has not yet gotten wind of any feedback from the BOUregarding the letter, and has also not been able to contact the studentfor a comment regarding this story.
This site will run updates for the story as it develops.
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