The All India Bank Employees’ Association AIBEA has threatened to go on a strike against the government’s proposal to close down ‘non-viable and loss-making’ rural branches. The association said that closing down the rural branches meant defeating the purpose of social banking.
In a letter to the ministry of finance, AIBEA general secretary CH Venkatachalam said, “We are aware that rural branches tend to be in losses due to the lack of adequate remunerative business in these remote areas. But still rural branches are very important for taking banking to the villages and to the common masses. While no one is against profits, objectives and responsibilities of social banking cannot be lost sight of.”
He said that the government had suggested that loss-banking branches should be re-located. This means that rural branches will be closed down and would be shifted to semi-urban and urban areas in the name of more business and profitability. The obvious causality would be the rural branches, he said, adding that the government had also suggested down-sizing as one of the strategies.
This means that the existing staff in these branches will be reduced. In many rural branches, employees, officers and managers are already finding it difficult to cope with the increasing volume of work on account of dealing with large number of accounts pertaining to the NREGA scheme and no-frill accounts. If the staff is reduced in the name of profitability, the staff in these branches would further suffer, he said in the letter.
In a separate letter to all the officer bearers, federations and bank-wise organisations, AIBEA said that it was strongly opposing the government's moves and measures and asked all the units to be ready for serious agitational programmes and strike actions if the government would move ahead in this regard.