SBI staff union condemns Chairman's view on loss of market share

Kolkata, Nov 6 (UNI) State Bank of India Staff Association today strongly condemned the Bank Chairman's recent observation in which he blamed the "frontline staff" for SBI's gradual losing of market share in the business.

Sharply reacting to Bank Chairman O P Bhatt's observation, SBISA General Secretary Ashok Dutta in a statement here tonight charged the SBI top management with unleasing a sinister campaign against its own empoyess by making derogatory remarks at several open fora.

Describing the move as very unfortunate for the SBI staff members, who had been working very hard for long to keep up the Bank's reputation even working with "not so user friendly technology", Mr Dutta claimed that "the frontline workforce of SBI can take on their counterparts of any other commercial bank, including the new generation private and foreign banks".

Stating that the "gap in efficiency widens to the disadvantage of SBI at the upper tiers", Mr Dutta blamed that the real reason of losing market share were "nothing but lack of vision, inability to promptly move with the market economy and inept handling of policy framework and the human resources".

The Association also criticised the Chairman's alleged view about the role of Bank unions and claimed that it was the SBI Staff Association, which had first signed in favour of the Bank's major computerisation programme and on its transfer policy giving top priority to the Bank's interest despite creating a huge wrath among the employees.

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