The Bank Employees’ Federation North Eastern Region, in its virtual meet held yesterday, strongly opposed privatization move of public sector banks, while demanding further improvement in 11th Bipartite Settlement. The Federation feels that skeletons stored in the cupboard of recent bank mergers are falling off. The bank mergers was formalized in April 2020, while the entire country was under lock-down. The declared objective was to strengthen public sector banking sectors. Now, couple of months apart, the real agenda stands revealed. If media reports are any indication, the Govt is set to privatize several PSBs. Everyone knows Govt of India nationalized the banking sectors in India in 1969, on the face of loot of public money by private banks, while hundreds of private banks used to vanish overnight, whoever remained overboard did not care about banking needs of the people and served the big business and big centres only. After nationalization, Indian banking sectors expanded manifold, spreading to nook and corner of the country, benefitting agriculture, SSI and small business, other priority sectors. Jobs in lakhs have been created setting the wheels of economic progress. Post nationalization saw expansion of banking in hitherto unbanked areas like N.E.Region. In 1969, before nationalization in private bank days, there were only 94 bank branches in N.E.Region, and the number has grown to 3000 branches at present; and benefited the economic development of the region. The meeting strongly felt that privatization is a design to allow the big corporates who swindled public money to go scot free and handover the public property to those looters in the name of stake sales. The meeting further denounced the spree of privatization of Public Sector Undertakings like Airport, Railways, Coal etc and resolved to fight the privatization attempt in banks. The meeting further urged the people of N.E. Region to strongly oppose bank’s privatization in the interest of the region. The meeting called upon cross section of bank employees to arouse public opinion against privatization to save national economy. The meeting also discussed the developments about MoU with regard 11th bipartite settlement, and unanimously resolved to unleash vigorous campaign for improvement in the settlement.
