SBI to go on indefinite stir from tomorrow

Mumbai, Apr 2 (UNI) Normal banking transactions, particularly government financial transactions, will be severely affected following the indefinite strike called by employees of the country's largest commercial bank, State Bank of India (SBI), beginning tomorrow.

About 210,000 employees spread across 9,000 branches countrywide, including officers of the premier public sector bank, are expected to remain off work since their talks yesterday with the chief labour comissioner in Delhi failed to sort out their long-pending demand for implementation of a revised pension scheme.

The government had called the All-India State Bank Officers' Federation and All India State Bank of India Staff Federation for negotiations in a last-ditch effort to ward off the strike.

While the pension scheme was revised and updated in the case of the seven associate banks of SBI, it was not revised for the employees of SBI inspite of several representations made to the management, said Mr Shantaraju, the all-India State Bank Officers' Federation general secretary.

Currently, an official of SBI having a monthly salary of above Rs 25,000 gets a pension of maximum Rs 4,250 only, based on the salary-scale of 1992, while the average industry payout to an employee is Rs 18,000 per month, said Mr. Shantaraju.

Similarly, in the case of family pension, an employee of SBI gets an amount of Rs 1,000 only as against the industry average payment of Rs 4,800.

Both the management of SBI and its largest shareholder, Reserve Bank of India have given their consent to the revision of the pension scheme, informed Mr Shantaraju, adding that the union finance ministry was yet to give its approval to the same.

The strike is expected to impact the salary and pension drawers, particularly after the closure of the financial year 2005-06.

The Government is largely dependent on SBI for collection of revenues from public and business houses. The strike in SBI will also adversely impact the business volume of the money-market and forex market.

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