AINBOF against privatisation of banks

CHENNAI: As Bank unions have given a call for strike on March 15-16 against the proposed privatisation of two state-owned lenders by the government, All India Nationalised Banks Officers’ Federation (AINBOF) on Saturday said it is creating awareness among the public on the ill-effects of privatization and will persuade the government to rethink on its agenda.

GV Manimaran, general secretary of AINBOF, said that they were conducting various programmes such as street corner meeting, customer meets, demonstrations, wearing black badges and protest masks, display of posters and banners at branches and offices, distribution of pamphlets to customers and public, and social media campaign among others.

Stating that only a handful of private sector banks, which were promoted by financial houses like ICICI, UTI, IDBI and HDFC, had survived, and many of the private sector entities that commenced their banking operations after 1990 were gone, Manimaran said the public sector banks still commanded more than 75 per cent of the market share, which proved the confidence the public sector banks enjoyed among the general public.

Manimaran said privatization would primarily impact the general public only as the social objectives would be lost in the name of profitability. Service charges would be increased and only those customers who were able to bear those charges would be serviced.