2023-11-20 21:55:14
No more traditional Caisse Desjardins booklets, no more counters in many small municipalities. Desjardins has closed its facilities in Albanel and Girardville, in Saguenay – Lac-Saint-Jean, and others will follow in the coming days.
The consequences are serious for users. For the citizens of Albanel and Girardville, it was their only ATM.
Several users encountered closed doors on Monday since the counters are now permanently closed. Citizens who want to use an ATM must now travel to neighboring municipalities where services are maintained, nearly 20 minutes by car.
“I didn’t know it was already closed here. Sometimes we need to pay for certain things in money and then we are stuck with the ATM card, I don’t know if the convenience store can accommodate us,” lamented a citizen of the municipality of Albanel.
Desjardins informed the municipalities that too few monthly transactions were causing these closures. For the affected municipalities, this is nonsense.
“It’s yet another service that we are losing to citizens in our municipality. We have older people, businesses too, who deal with this Desjardins counter service that we had for 100 years, it was one of the oldest in Saguenay – Lac-Saint-Jean.
At festivals, it still pays in money. I know that our festival has gone a long way by adding terminals, but it will never be enough to supply the demand,” underlined the mayor of Albanel, Dave Plourde.
More closures to come
Other municipalities in Lac-Saint-Jean will suffer the same fate on December 7. This is the case for Ascension, Labrecque, Saint-Nazaire and Sainte-Monique.
“When you have fewer services, it doesn’t do anything to come there. We are far from everything, we often hear it said. We have a municipality that has developed very dynamically, we have lots of things for young families, we are getting organized, but this is giving us a blow,” mentioned the mayor of Sainte-Monique, Mario Desbiens.
Several petitions are circulating in the hope that Desjardins will reverse its decision. Thousands of citizens added their signatures.
“It’s a cooperative. It belongs to the members and we have no say!” lamented one of the signatories.
“I’m really disappointed. You know, at our age it’s no fun going up to Alma or Delisle in winter,” added one of them.
“At least for the members of Desjardins it would have been the “fun” that they could take on and have a public meeting to explain to them,” underlined the mayor of Albanel.
Several municipalities fear losing their ticket office in the coming months or years. Desjardins did not respond to requests for explanation.
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