AIBEA strike in Dec against selloff Bill

The winter session begins on December 2.

As a form of protest, the Maha Gujarat Bank Employees Association (MBEA) staged a dharna here at Ellsibridge on Thursday.

The MBEA also organised two rallies in Ahmedabad in which more than 500 bank employees participated. The dharna and the rally were organised against the government's move to privatise nationalised banks.

The general secretary of the association, Dushyant Trivedi, said: "The privatisation Bill should be withdrawn, and the government should fulfill our demands."

MBEA has more than 25,000 members in Gujarat. Similar rallies were also organised in different parts of the country by other bank associations as per the instructions of AIBEA.

The association wants the government to fulfill its demands such as an increase in the rate of interest for fixed deposits, profit earned by private banks in India being taken back to foreign countries should be retained by the government and a reduction in the rate of interest for small borrowers and farmers.

According to the union, public money should only be used for the welfare of the common man, and the 74 per cent foreign investment plan in nationalised banks should be discouraged.

Trivedi said, "Rs 1,50,000 crore of bad loans have to be recovered from big companies. The government is helping these companies instead of helping the banks to take extreme steps. Nationalised banks are not in a position to take actions against these defaulters if the government does not support the banks. The government should initiate legal proceedings against these companies."

"The government wants the banks to settle with defaulters on a lesser amount which we don't want to do," he said.