Staff Correspondent

The Bangladesh Bank has decided to devise safety and security guidelines for lockers, vaults and automated teller machines for the commercial banks of the country, said sources in the central bank.

'We have already instructed the department concerned to look into the issues,' said a high official of the BB.

'The heist from the BRAC Bank is an eye-opener for us; some banks were robbed in the past but this is for the first time that the contents of lockers were robbed,' he said.

The private sector bank has been asked to provide the details of the heist and its security measures for the lockers, he added.

The robbers, who hired rooms of Hotel Nid Mahal just one floor above the BRAC Bank's Sukrabad branch, entered the locker room by cutting the ceiling on early Saturday and made off with a huge amount of ornaments and other valuables by breaking open 75 lockers.

The total amount of the gold or the value of the looted ornaments is yet to be ascertained.

In the security features many things like construction of vaults, thickness of the walls, floor and ceiling, CCTV facility, round-the-clock guard system, quality of the locks and other factors are expected to be included, he said.

Regarding the safety of ATMs, he said the location, parking facility, 24-hour guard system and construction of booths would be stipulated in the guidelines.

'The Bangladesh Bank will finalise the guidelines after scrutinising the security system in the neighbouring and other countries,' said the BB official.

However, there will be no scope for compensation for stolen contents of lockers in the guidelines, he said.

Unlike cash deposits, of which the banks keep records, the nature and price of the valuables stored in the lockers are unknown to banks, he said.

'If a bank does not know the value of the things in the lockers, how can it give compensation?' he explained.

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