Strike cripples Banking services in Arunachal

Itanagar, Sep 25: The second day of the 48-hour nationwide bank strike today disrupted banking services throughout the state, while an SBI employee was allegedly assaulted at Daporijo in Upper Subansiri district by unknown miscreants.

The general secretary of the SBI employees union alleged that a few persons came to the victim's residence yesterday and asked him to open the bank as they wanted to withdraw Rs 10,000 from their account.

However, when the employee refused to do so, he was manhandled by the miscreants and had to be admitted to Daporijo hospital in critical condition, the general secretary added.

About a thousand employees of various public sector banks, including 700 staff of 42 branches of the SBI spread all over the state, have struck work in support of their various demands.

The two-day strike caused hardships to common people, particularly the business community.

However, private sector banks are functioning normally.

The strike has been called by the United Forum of Banks Union (UFBU) in protest against the proposed privatisation of public sector undertaking banks, government's plan to merge banks, implementation of MoU between Indian Banks Association (IBA) and UFBU on issue of one more option for pension to provident Fund (PF) and announcement of pension benefits for its employees.

UNI