SBI: Smooth Banking Interrupted

BANKING TRANSACTIONS worth over Rs 600 crores were affected severely in the city on Monday as SBI employees went on an indefinite strike called by the All India State Bank of India Staff Federation.

BANKING TRANSACTIONS worth over Rs 600 crores were affected severely in the city on Monday as SBI employees went on an indefinite strike called by the All India State Bank of India Staff Federation.

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A major chunk of the transaction losses were dealt to the city’s traders, stock brokers and corporate houses holding a major share of current account balances in a total of 833 SBI branches in the Lucknow Circle.

A senior SBI official at the Local Head Office in Lucknow commented: “We are going to review the situation every morning during the entire period of the strike and decide the future course of action. Right now, we are just hoping that the strike gets over within a day or two in Lucknow.”

Cumulative losses to the business community is estimated at around Rs 400 crores on a single day as payouts to raw material suppliers, channel partners, investors and retail agents were held up in a large number of offices across the city. The remaining amount of Rs 200 crores are being cited as losses to high value customers who could not withdraw money from their savings accounts on Monday to make necessary payments in the city.

Govt workers worst affected
The worst affected by the SBI strike were government employees of various departments and UP Secretariat whose salary accounts are maintained by the various SBI branches in the city. Various clearing houses in the city could not process cheques issued by SBI as all its branches were closed.

Saturday was the only day when some people could have withdrawn salary.

“The announcement of the strike was known to us on Sunday,” said Mohan Chauksi, a government officer. He said employees of government departments where salaries would have been credited in SBI branches before March 31 might have been lucky to withdraw cash from their salary accounts before the strike began on Monday. “But it seems unlikely,” he added.

Alert! ATMs may run dry

IN the next 36 hours, your SBI ATM Card could stop giving you that ‘anywhere banking’ convenience in the city.

With the 22,000-odd SBI employees in the Lucknow Circle determined to carry on with their indefinite strike on a call given by All India State Bank of India Staff Federation (AISBISF) on Monday, the bank’s customers are in for some trying times in the coming days as cash in ATMs is expected to go dry within 36 hours.

“Every SBI employee (except the 15 top management executives of DGM rank and above ) in the Lucknow Circle is sitting on indefinite strike. The ATMs would dispense only the amount of cash that had been fed in a machine a day before the indefinite strike by the employees”, KK Singh, President of SBI Staff Association, Lucknow Circle told HT Live.

He said SBI employees had never intended to put so many bank customers in trouble by joining the indefinite strike call given by AISBISF. “This time we would like citizens to pressurise the government to hear the problems of SBI employees whose pension scale has not been revised for the last 14 years,” Singh said.

“Not a single employee of any SBI branch in the Lucknow Circle would help the top management even in case of emergency. The strike is total and would remain that way till our demands were met across the country”, he said.

Singh said the SBI employees would gather every day at the bank’s Local Head Office (LHO) in Lucknow and participate in meetings in a peaceful manner. “We don’t intend to organise any demonstrations or stage dharnas in any part of the city during the strike period”, he added.

An ICICI Bank official from Mumbai informed that the bank was capable of handling any pressure at any of its ATMs in the UP circle if SBI customers used their Visa-enabled cards in ICICI ATM counters.

Meanwhile, the United Forum of Bank Unions, UP Unit extended its support to the SBI employees while issuing a statement that if the issues rasised were not addressed at the earliest, it would be compelled to stop the functioning of all clearing houses in Uttar Pradesh.