SBI's indefinite strike enters day 3, banking services paralysed

Kolkata, Apr 5 (UNI) State Bank of India's nationwide indefinite strike in all the 9,000-odd SBI branches across the country, which entered the third day today, has paralysed the banking services besides causing severe inconveniences to the public.

Keeping this in mind and in an effort to arrive at an amicable solution to the present impasse, the Central Labour Commissioner has convened a tri-partite meeting in New Delhi today with representative of the Union government, the bank management and the SBI Employee's and Officer's union.

Claiming that like the past two days the SBI employees throughout the country, including in West Bengal, were staging demonstrations and dharnas in front of their respective branches to press for their demands to increase the ceiling of pension and the amount of family pension fund.

Speaking to UNI, SBI Employees Association General Secretary Ashok Dutta and his counterpart in SBI Officer's Association M C Halder said the morale of the striking 2.10 lakhs bank employees was very high and they were determined to continue their struggle till their demands were conceded by the Union government.

They, however, expressed sincere regrets for the serious inconveniences to the people.

No SBI cheques were cleared in any of the Reserve Bank of India branches in the country in the last two days and the bank's ATMs were not operating as cash kept in them had already been exhausted.

Incidentally, the SBI has already set up a separate pension corpus of Rs 1,000 crores through systematic contributions from the Bank's annual profit a few years ago and in case of any increase in the ceiling the bank's additional burden would be to the tune of only Rs 400 crores.

UNI ABA JYN RD 1207