Over Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) in currency notes have gone down the drain, literally, thanks to the Mumbai floods on June 26. The notes, kept in about a dozen currency chests of commercial banks in Mumbai, are now being dried and counted before being shredded by the Reserve Bank of India.
There are about 50 currency chests in Mumbai located in the basement of buildings from where bank branches operate.
The chests hold cash balances that banks maintain with the RBI as their cash reserve ratio and also for regular settlements. About a dozen of them in Mumbai suburbs like Juhu, the Bombay Kurla Complex and Kalina were flooded and currency notes worth over Rs 1,000 crore got soiled.
The banks did swing into action and installed special pumps to drain the water out from the underground vaults but could not save the notes.
Hundreds of bank personnel have been on the job since the last week of June. Wearing gloves and masks, they are working in shifts to dry the notes and count them. Special exhaust fans have been installed in the currency chests to fight the unbearable humidity underground.
Some of the banks did try to dry the notes by laying them on tables under strong halogen bulbs. As it took long hours to dry using this method, some banks have installed electric ovens that can be used for drying 70,000 notes in two-and-a-half hours.
In the second stage of drying, the banks are using hair dryers as, even after over-drying, some of notes are sticking together, thanks to the muddy water that flooded the cash bins.
