{{The announcement by Barclays Bank Plc of the UK that it will from this week withdraw banking services from some 250 money transfer companies has caused panic among Somalis in the diaspora who use these companies to send money to family members back home.}}<\/p>\n
Explaining the move, Barclays stated: \u201cIt is recognised that some money service businesses don\u2019t have the proper checks in place to spot criminal activity and could, therefore, unwittingly be facilitating money laundering and terrorist financing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Critics of the decision say that remittances are a \u201clifeline\u201d for the millions of Somalis who are not served by formal banking institutions and that thousands will not be able to pay for food, education and medical expenses. <\/p>\n
Some researchers have suggested that Somalis operate and even thrive in a largely unregulated and informal economy because of remittances.<\/p>\n
Last month, a group of researchers and aid workers sent a letter to Mark Simmonds, the UK\u2019s Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Africa, urging him to persuade Barclays not to withdraw its services to the money transfer companies (also known as hawala), adding that these companies not only provide essential services to the global Somali community, they also make it possible for aid agencies, such as UNDP and Oxfam, to pay their staff and procure services in Somalia.<\/p>\n
NMG<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{The announcement by Barclays Bank Plc of the UK that it will from this week withdraw banking services from some 250 money transfer companies has caused panic among Somalis in the diaspora who use these companies to send money to family members back home.}} Explaining the move, Barclays stated: \u201cIt is recognised that some money […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-8960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8960"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=8960"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=8960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}