India / Bank unions call for strike on March 15-16 against privatisation of PSBs

New Delhi: Banking services in Mysuru region will be hit on March 15 and 16 consequent to a nationwide strike called by various bank employees unions to protest the privation of public sector banks.

As the banks remain closed on second Saturdays and Sundays, banking services will remain affected for four days though ATMs will be replenished with cash to enable withdrawals. But other services including cheque clearance will be affected.

The United Forum of Bank Unions in Mysuru said that their organisation consisting of 9 bank unions and representing nearly 1 million employees, will go on a two-day strike from Monday.

H. Balakrishna, Convenor, United Forum of Bank Unions, said that there are nearly 500 bank branches in Mysuru district alone and almost 3,000 employees all of whom will participate in the strike. The employees will assemble at the SBI zonal office near T.K. Layout on Monday and on Canara Bank premises at Nazarbad on Tuesday and stage a protest demonstration.

He said the hard-earned money of the public and the commoners is at stake and hence they seek their support. The private banks do not implement most of the government programmes that entails extending loans to farmers or local entrepreneurs, poverty alleviation programmes etc., and are driven only by profit motive. This will have a bearing on mass banking, said Mr. Balakrishna who pointed out that the government’s policy has also ushered in a low interest rate regime with the depositors unable to survive on the returns. With privatisation things will go from bad to worse and hence the public should also support the strike, he added.

The bank unions said it was a myth that private enterprise epitomises efficiency and if that were to be the case there should not have been any NPAs running into lakhs of crores of rupees from large private corporate entities.

The UFBU said the nationalisation of 14 private banks in 1969 and 6 more in 1980 helped reach out to the common man and bank branches began functioning even in remote rural areas and brought a vast population into the banking system. Class banking was transformed to mass banking and the commoners and the deprived section of society could access banking services, according to the UFBU.

Dubbing the proposed privatisation move as regressive, the UFBU furnished the operating profits of the public sector banks of the last 10 years and said instead of strengthening them, the present policies are aimed at weakening them. Instead of tightening the laws to recover large NPAs and take criminal action against wilful defaulters, the government has introduced insolvency and bankruptcy code which results in write-offs and dents the balance sheets of the public sector banks, he added.