Painstaking investigations conducted by Asempa News at some commercial banks in Accra have revealed banks are partly responsible for the non-existence of the one pesewa coins in the country. The investigations revealed that unlike the other cedi denominations, the one pesewa coin is simply unavailable at the banks. Some of the banks visited which did not have any one pesewa coin were Stanbic bank, Ecobank, UBA, Barclays and SG-SSB banks. It was only Barclays Bank where Asempa News', Kwaku Antwi-Otoo managed to get 30Gp worth of one pesewa coins out of the 50gp he submitted to a teller for conversion. Tellers at other banks claim the one pesewa coins are being kept in their volts because no one is interested in using them. Kwaku Antwi-Otoo joined the long queues in all five banks just to try and convert his 50Gp coin into one pesewa denominations but none of the banks, except Barclays could get the coins for him. At the Ecobank, a teller told Asempa News “we will only get the one pesewa coins for you the following day.” At SG-SSB the tellers were surprised at the request for one pesewa coins. Kwaku tried to use the one pesewa coins for sachet water but the the seller rejected them. The sachet water seller said people do not accept the coin as change so she could not accept it too. Kwaku then picked a Hyundai ‘trotro’ with registration number GR 1924 Z heading towards Kwame Nkrumah Circle and reports that the driver’s mate only accepted the coins after a lengthy persuasion. A Member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of Ghana (BOG), Dr. Ben Amoah told Asempa News BOG has issued enough one pesewa coins to the various banks so he was surprised they were not in the system. Dr. Amoah said “it is illegal for one to reject the one pesewa coin as a medium of exchange in Ghana.” He has therefore asked Asempa FM to furnish the BOG with records of their investigations for further action. Story: Kwaku Antwi-Otoo/Asempa FM/Ghana