Bank Employees’ Association holds protest against Centre’s merger move

Bank Employees’ Association holds protest against Centre’s merger move

Udupi: The Members of the All India Bank Employees’ Association and Bank employees federation of India, Udupi Unit on Tuesday October 22 staged a protest here against the Centre’s decision to merge public sector banks into four entities.

Employees of the public and private sector banks gathered infornt of the zonal office of the Corporation Bank Udupi and shouted slogans against the government’s decision.

Udupi Corporation Bank employees union vice president Raghurama Krishna Ballal said that owing to the merger of banks, several branches have been closed down and the poor people in rural areas are deprived of banking facilities. While merging associate banks with the State Bank of India, a total of 6,950 branches were closed down across India.

Large scale of merger of branches would adversely impact banking for the common people. The experience of mergers has not been encouraging on the business front, customer service, NPA (non-performing assets) management. Without assessing the impact of the previous two mergers, the Central government unnecessarily proceeded with another and a bigger bout of merger. With the merger, a few branches will close down and employment will be affected. Increase in NPAs has put the identity of banks at risk. The merger would have an adverse impact, he said.

Bank emplyoees union leaders Nithyananda, Ravindra, Ram Mohan, Ramesh, Herald D’Souza, Nagesh Nayak, Manoj Kumar Jayan Malpe, Gurudat and others were present.