M

ore than 2,400 people have joined an online petition supporting Trian Airlangga, a visually impaired man, who was rejected by Bank Central Asia (BCA) when he tried to open a personal account.

On Tuesday, Trian started an online petition on change.org to tell the public about the unfair treatment.

Trian said that he called a BCA branch office in Cipete, South Jakarta on Aug. 2 to open a bank account, which he was told would only require an identity card.

However, by the time he arrived at the bank, he received different information: That he would not be allowed to open a personal account unless jointly held with a relative.

Trian lost the argument as he was not allowed to defend himself.

'€œI was not given a chance to explain my condition. I was offended by the bank'€™s customer service officer, who did not let me participate in the conversation about the account opening procedure,'€ Trian said in his statement in change.org.

Trian was accompanied by an ojek driver (motorcycle taxi) when arriving at the branch office.

A customer service officer later told him one of the requirements for opening a bank account was that the customer had to be able to read the terms and conditions set by BCA.

'€œVisually impaired people have a different way of reading. We read with our fingers and ears,'€ he said.

Arief Aziz, change.org communication director, said that Trian never had problems with other banks before.

He said that BCA should not have applied such discrimination.

'€œIt is regrettable that BCA, a reputed bank that provides advanced service and care, couldn'€™t find a way to serve visually impaired customers without requiring them to be dependent on their relatives,'€ Arief told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Contacted separately, BCA corporate secretary Inge Setiawati said that the bank always required people with special needs to be assisted when opening a bank account.

'€œWe usually require visually impaired customers to open a bank account jointly held with their relatives, solely to protect them from people who want to take advantage of them,'€ Inge told the Post over the phone on Thursday.

'€œWe had no intention to discriminate visually impaired people, but we will evaluate our service for people with special needs,'€ she continued.

Inge said that the bank had no figures of customers with special needs, but she said that the numbers were very small.

'€œHowever, this policy has been going on for years and we never had any problem with it, none of our visually impaired customers felt discriminated against,'€ Inge said.