Despite many banks and financial institutions spreading even to remote areas in Kenya, most fishermen around Lake Victoria have no bank accounts.
They depend on their mattresses to store their money. What pushes them to remain so while most Kenyans are embracing various banking options offered today?
Most of the fishermen do not trust banks. The situation is made worse by the fact that only small micro-finances and bank agents are available at the local trading centres. This raises the fear of losing their money to dishonest agents or fraudulent micro-finance institutions.
Secondly, most well-known banks are far away in town making fishermen who do not earn much from the fishing business keep off due to high travelling expenses involved when going to banks.
Banks also charge transaction fees, which further push away the fishermen.
Poor roads around the lake are also to blame as they make travelling very hard and expensive discouraging people from travelling to banks. For instance, Suba South constituency has no single tarmacked road since independence. This makes only a few public vehicles available for public transport.
The banks have also not reached out to locals to educate them on how they can embrace mobile banking. This might be due to poor mobile network especially around the hilly terrains of Suba where mobile networks are unreliable. This leaves many fishermen with no option but to keep their earnings at home: under their mattresses