visakhapatnam in a rerun of the demonetisation aftermath that saw a shortage of cash crippling atms in the city people in the city are once again complaining of a citywide shortage of cash at atms in the runup to the sankranti festival with a majority of atms of various banks in north andhra districts and east godavari running dry for the past few dayswith the festival only five days away scores of people are facing a cash crunch as they are not getting money at atms serpentine queues are witnessed at the few atms that have some cash we are filling the chest of the atms every day but the number of the withdrawals has increased manifold compared to normal days because of the festival many people are going to visit their native villages and go shopping so naturally atms will dry up within hours said ravi kumar a bank employee working in the cityvisakhapatnam district has around 1600 atms including more than 400 atms in the port city of different banks numbering around 50 the north andhra districts visakhapatnam vizianagaram and srikakulam have around 2000 atms of 1310 branches of 50 different nationalised banks and private banks besides various cooperative bankswe have faced the same situation during the demonetisation period of november 2016 to april 2017 again we are facing a shortage of cash in the festival days we never expected this kind of situation to recur luckily various shopping malls and complexes are accepting debit cards and to some extent we are relieved but all our needs are not solved by debit cards said yellina swathi a residentaccording to sources in banks the transactions of the customers have come down in the past one year majority of the depositors are withdrawing the money rather than depositing the money after demonetisation depositors from the rural areas have been withdrawing the money from the banks and investing it in real estate and other avenues even we are not in a position to give large amounts if any customer comes for more than rs 5 lakh said an employee of a bank in narsipatnam