Alta Bank: 10,000 denars a week of your own money, while 5,000 welfare recipients wait for a counter to open

Bitola, queues at the ATMs. Since Macedonia's central bank, the National Bank, put Alta Bank under temporary administration for three months on November 1, customers can withdraw or spend by card no more than 10,000 denars a week from their own accounts, and companies can't move money out of the bank. "I need more money, but I don't have it, what can I do," says one customer waiting at an ATM.

It's hardest for people who don't have a card, or whose card got stuck in the machine. The branches are closed, so for now they have no way of reaching their money at all. Some customers want to move their accounts to another bank, but for that too they need an Alta Bank counter - which isn't open.

Solutions are being prepared, one at a time. More than 5,000 people on social assistance and other welfare benefits received their money through this bank. Counters are being announced for them, first in Bitola, then in Skopje and Strumica, with priority and no limit. For around 3,500 pensioners without payment cards, an option to withdraw up to 20,000 denars at the counter is being prepared. And the salaries of some public-sector employees who bank with Alta are, for now, in question - unofficially, they have been advised to open accounts at another bank in time.

The backstory is in Belgrade. The National Bank of Serbia revoked the licence of Alta Banka AD Belgrade, where bankruptcy proceedings have been opened. The Bitola bank isn't bankrupt but under administration. Three administrators from the National Bank - Ilija Andovski, Vesna Stojčevska and Marija Todorovska - have 21 days to establish its financial position. Governor Trajko Slaveski says the owner in Belgrade has been told to sell the shares, and if it doesn't, the National Bank will put them up for auction.

The official comfort is that deposits are insured up to 30,000 euros and that the bank keeps operating. True. But the insurance is for the day the bank might fail. Until then, your money is yours up to 10,000 denars a week. When the Serbian regulator shuts down the parent bank, how early should ours have known what was happening to its Bitola daughter? The opposition has already announced an interpellation against the governor - so the answer will have to be given in parliament too.

Those who can least afford to wait are the ones waiting longest. For a pensioner without a card or a family on welfare, what's in the account isn't savings. It's medicine, electricity and bread until the end of the month.