AIBEA urges Centre to ensure recovery of bad debts

Chennai, Dec 17: C H Venkatachalam, General Secretary of the ALL India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) urged the Central Government to take suitable action for recovering the bad debts of Rs 2,40,000 crore.

Inaugurating the public session of the 20th State Conference of the Tamil Nadu Bank Employees Federation here today, Mr Venkatachalam pointed out that out of these huge mounted bad debts, 95 per cent were non-recoverable due to the fraudulent attitude of the private sector and corporate groups.

He criticised the Union Finance ministry's reported move to constitute a corporate redebt restructure scheme in which, instead of recovering the bad debts from the corporate sector, the Government renewed their loans after providing huge concessions.

Under this scheme, the corporate sector which was having bank dues in crore of rupees could repay their bank dues in long and easy instalments, he alleged and said a sum of Rs 75,000 crore bad debts was brought under the corporate debt restructure scheme.

He alleged that the Bank managements instead of recovering the loans and outstandings, used to writ-off atleast Rs 10,000 crore bad debts every year, as per the directions of the Union Finance Ministry.

He recalled the strikes by the bank employees in the past and said only becauise of these strikes by the bankmen, the Union Government was still hesitating to announce its various new schemes, including Foreign Direct Investment(FDI) on Indian Banks, privatisation of banking industry, leaving the insterest of bank employees, as well as the customers in jeopardy.

He called upon the bank employees to be ready for another nationwide strike some time in February next to show their solidarity against the Union Government's move to announce several things, including privatisation of banks and to destabilise the country's banking sector in the ensuing budget session of the Lok Sabha.

The Conference in its resolutions strongly opposed the outsourcing in any form and urged the Government and the Bankers to desist from these tenacious practice of outsourcing of the bank jobs to outside agencies. Talking to newspersons here, the General Secretary of the Federation E Arunachalam said the Conference also called upon its members to rise up to the occassion to provide efficient services to the customers of the banks.

The Conference had decided to associate with all organisational and agitational activities to be launched by the working class for their demands that the Government suitably amend the Bonus Act by ensuring that all the employees avail the bonus facility, without the imposition of the Ceiling Act.

It wanted the Tamil Nadu Government not to discriminate the bank employees and to maintain parity with regard to the number of holidays for the Government employees under Negotiable Instruments Act.

The Conference urged the Central Government to stall its onesided economic and anti-labour polices, as it only benefitted the rich and elite,affecting the workers and the common people, and congratulated the bankmen for their consistent and persistent efforts, campaigns and struggles in this regard and called upon them to be ready for further struggles int the future to protect banking sector.

The Conference wanted that Indian Banks association and other banks Managements to protect the interest of the bank deposit collectors, and not to further procrastinate on the matter and take all steps to settle expeditiously to fill up the existing one lakh vacancies in the banks, and to provide pension to the eligibe retitred employees and to process on the compassionate appointments.

The Conference also requested the Tamil Nadu Government to accept the recommendatiosn of Prof Vaidyanathan Committee and to get recapitalisation for loss making primary cooperative banks, and to hold elections tot he cooperatives immediately.

The Conference while congratulating the Tamil Nadu Government for regularising 35,000 employees working in Cooperative banks and other primary cooperative institutions, wage revision for urban cooperative banks, demanded pension for cooperative bank employees.

UNI