AIBEA to launch nationwide struggle during June-July

Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu, May 20 (UNI) The All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) will launch a nationwide struggle during June-July to urge the Centre and the bank managements to recover 'bad debts' accounting to Rs 1,00,000 crore from business giants.

AIBEA General Secretary C H Venkatachalam told newspersons here today that as part of their proposed agitation, a signature campaign would be launched to collect 25 crore signatures from people belonging to various walks of life. The signatures, along with a memorandum, would be submitted to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to urge him to fill up the existing vacancies in the banks, stop outsourcing of bank jobs and instruct banks to liberally lend loans to poor and farmers.

He said the 'bad debts' are increasing every year and last year about Rs 9,000 crore had been written off. Inspite of this crisis, large business groups continued to avail 60 per cent of different forms of loans from banks, while people from the lower strata of society and Below Poverty Line (BPL) were denied loan, he alleged.

Mr Venkatachalam said that though the banks were instructed to lend 40 per cent as priority loans and 18 per cent as agricultural loans, most of the banks never followed the instructions. In fact, the disbursement to agriculture sector was only 13 per cent.

He said over one lakh vacancies existed in nationalised banks and instead of filling up these posts, the bank managements were trying to outsource the jobs.

UNI