Around two lakh bankers of the state involved in the two-day strike that started to press for salary hike
Lucknow, 31 January: Bankers (only Public sector banks) started a two-day nationwide strike on the call of United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) to press for the wage revision on Friday.
Around two lakh bank employees of Uttar Pradesh were involved in this strike which started on wage hike. Due to the strike, transactions of about thirty thousand crore rupees were affected across the state today.
Ten thousand bankers of about 905 branches of various government banks in Lucknow and two lakh bankers of 14000 branches of the entire state were involved in this strike.
Anil Tiwari, media in-charge of the UP unit of the forum, told The Lucknow Journal that the strike in the banks affected about Rs 2500 crore in the capital Lucknow , whereas Rs 30000 crore in the state.
He informed that due to the banks strike, the crowd at the ATM to withdraw cash was more.
โThere is facility to withdraw money through 990 ATMs in Lucknow and 12000 ATMs in the entire state, but two days of strike after that, Sunday holiday, thus due to lack of cash for three days, how much will these ATMs be able to work? He cannot say anything,โ Tiwari added.
Bankers in the capital held a meeting in front of the local head office of the State Bank.
Addressing the gathering, KK Singh, general secretary and national joint secretary of the Uttar Pradesh unit of the National Confederation of Bank Employees (NCBE), said that we are not ready for a settlement until a wage increase of less than 20 percent. He told that since November 2017, bank workers are trying every efforts to increase their salary, but due to the stubborn attitude of the Central Government and the IBA, no result was achieved yet.
โThe last increment has been increased to 15 per cent. We are not ready for any compromise to get increment agreements not less than 20 per cent. After a two-days strike, we are going on an indefinite strike from March 11 to 13 and April 1. Two lakh bank workers of the state will deduct about thirty crore salary and leave in one day strike,โ informed Singh.
UFBU state convenor YK Arora said that today, due to mismanagement of banks, one scam after another is being exposed everyday, in fact I am not responsible for this situation of the banks but the high management and political pressure on the banks is responsible.
Staff leader Dilip Chauhan said that social banking was done by the government from nationalized banks, due to which NPA has increased today.
On the other hand, State Bank Officers Association General Secretary Pawan Kumar said that overtime has not been paid despite working in demonetisation for two months continuously till late night. He said that the revision of the salary of bankers is being done by IBA in an uncompromising manner despite clear instructions from the Government of India.
The meeting was also addressed by Deepu Bajpai, RN Shukla, SD Mishra, DP Verma, Akhilesh Mohan, SK Sangatani, Anil Srivastava, UK Dubey, Rajesh Shukla and bankers were prepared for the long struggle due to lack of respectable salary hike.
Similarly, bankers from other cities of the state including Varanasi, Prayagraj, Kanpur, Meerut and Agra also stopped work and demonstrated at their place. This strike of bankers will continue on Saturday.
