Privatisation of PSBs: Two-day bank strike from December 16

The United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) has called a two-day strike from December 16 to protest against the Centre's plan to privatise public sector banks.

Sanjay Das, general secretary of All India Bank Officers Confederation (AIBOC), said that besides the two-day strike, a series of other agitational programmes will be held if the government does not give up the idea of privatisation of the banks.

In the budget speech of 2021, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said that two public sector banks will be privatised during the current fiscal.

UFBU is an umbrella organisation of bank unions.

Das said that this move to privatise PSBs will hurt the priority sectors of the economy and also credit flow to self-help groups and to the rural economy.

The proposed move is not based on sound economic logic but is purely a political decision to hand over the banks to "crony capitalists", he said.

According to him, 70 per cent of the country's total deposits are with the public sector banks and handing them over to private capital will put the common man's money deposited with these banks into jeopardy.