PEOPLE Living with Disabilities (PLWD) have hailed the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) for organising an awareness training to enable them have knowledge on financial issues.
Bukoba Municipal Council Secretary for Deaf Persons, Ms Jovitha Jopnathan (27), made the remarks recently after attending a one-day awareness training that was organised by BoT and attended by stakeholders, mainly PLWD.
Elaborating, she said a big number of PLWD, including the deaf persons, were on many occasions being cheated by getting fake currencies from fraudsters capitalising on their incapacity.
“On behalf of People Living with Disabilities I hail BoT for the timely training enabling many of us to get the much-needed knowledge on financial issues. We can now easily identify fake bank currencies and report the cases to police,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Central Bank appealed to Tanzanians to embrace digital money services and shun the habit of carrying large amounts of money.
Mwanza BoT Manager- Economic Department, Dr Deogratias Macha, explained that people should develop a habit of using digital wallets.
“Carrying large amounts of money in their (people) pockets is risky to their safety as thieves can easily steal the money and injure them in the process,” he said.
He explained that the government incurs a heavy cost of printing new banknotes and appealed to people to handle them with care.
He advised people with disabilities not to hesitate utilising bank services to get loans through their respective saving and credit cooperative groups.
The training was aimed to impart knowledge to groups of people with special needs on BOT activities and how to safe-keep bank notes.
BoT was established by the Bank of Tanzania Act, 1965 and became operational on June 14th, 1966.
