Staff stir hits city banking services

BANKING SERVICES were affected in the city on Friday following the day-long strike observed by the bank employees. The strike call was given by the UP Bank Employees’ Union and transaction worth Rs 290 crore could not be executed.

In response to a strike call all 36 banks of the city remained closed on Friday.

The employees also stopped the clearing of MICAR and high value cheques worth Rs 100 crore. Cash deposits worth Rs 75 crore and payment worth Rs 55 were also affected.

Transactions worth Rs 60 crore related to other transactions including draft, income tax, sales tax, housing loan, term loan and foreign exchange were also affected.

The employees staged a demonstration at the regional office of the Punjab National Bank.

Addressing the gathering on the occasion, secretary of the UP Bank Employees Union Ashok Shukla accused the union government of pursuing its policy of privatising nationalised banks by outsourcing several services like clearing of cheques, verification of loan applications and even cash payment.

“Owing to outsourcing of the process of clearing of cheques, confidential business transactions of traders will be exposed to an outsider,” Shukla said.

He said that more one lakh posts were lying vacant in nationalised banks but no new recruitments were being done.

Addressing the employees, president and joint Secretary of the union RP Pandey and Sudhir Sonkar said that the Union Government must give a viable alternative to pension to bank employees because about half of the bank employees were still not getting the pension benefits.