Bank employees strike work, protest against merger & NPA

Coimbatore: More than 1,500 bank employees in the city, across all cadres, struck work and staged a demonstration on the State Bank Road near the railway station on Wednesday to register their protest against the Central government’s move to merge the Bank of Baroda, Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank and the delay in recovering non-performing assets.
As many as nine workers unions of nationalised banks under the banner of the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) staged the protest.

Representatives of UFBU said the merger move was an anti-labour activity as it would cause heavy loss of jobs.

Also, if merged, the number of branches of the three banks would come down and would cause customers to move to other banks, they said.

“Just like what happened when the associate banks of the State Bank of India were merged in 2017, causing heavy job loss and closure of around 6,500 branches, the proposed merger of the three banks also would cause havoc,” said a protester.

“There are non-performing assets to the tune of more than Rs 10lakh-crore, of which about 74% was loans given to big corporates. The centre has not done anything to recover these loans,” he added.