Agona Kwanyako, C/R, Oct 18, GNA- The ARB Apex Bank is to help tackle the issue of poverty alleviation through Micro finance and financial outlays to individuals and groups, who cannot be assisted by the big banks.

Mr. R.M. Addo, Head, Training Department of the ARB Apex Bank who announced this at the 20th Annual General Meeting of Agona Rural Bank said the big banks only focus on large-scale operators.

He said the a micro-finance desk has been established at the offices of the ARB Apex Bank to assist rural banks to formulate new programmes and activities to bring relief to the masses who required assistance and directions to be able overcome poverty.

Mr. Addo said that Apex Bank has designed several training programmes, which would be implemented for all categories of rural banks personnel throughout the country to upgrade their performance. He hoped that these tailor-made programmes would address identified weakness in the operation of rural banks and put them on the road to dominance of the banking sector in Ghana.

Mr Addo stated that every rural bank will be assisted with the State-of -the art computers and banking software to link Apex bank regional and head offices in a wide are network to facilitate reporting. He said customers would be served by the cashier with a stroke of button because their balances, signatures and pictures would be displayed on the computer and cashier will pay if only she or he is satisfy with all the details.

Mr Addo commended the manager of the bank Mr John Ofori , for being a lead facilitator and resource person in the training programmes of the ARB and Apex bank.

He said Mr. Ofori has been chosen as one of the three managers who, were invited to team up with the ARB Apex Bank secretariat to work on the new cheque clearing arrangements.

"His hard work and willingness to drink from the fountain of knowledge without questioning the taste made him the obvious choice to join the team tasked with responsibility of identifying a suitable banking application software for adoption by all rural banks in Ghana, a responsibility which took the team to Kenya, the Netherlands and Britain," Mr Addo observed.

He urged board of directors and management of the bank for their prudent and effective management and security concerning the operations of the bank to satisfy customers.