Demonetisation: Bank union seeks overtime for extra working hours

Days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised bank employees for the hard work done during the demonetisation period, a bank union has demanded overtime for the extra hours put in by staff during the 50-day window that ended on December 30.

National Organisation of Bank Workers (NOBW), an affiliate of Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, in a letter to the Prime Minister said, “Bank employees have worked 12 to 18 hours a day during the last 50 days. Only few banks have considered overtime for extra working. Kindly advise the management to consider the overtime for beyond working hours worked by bank employees.” 

It also called for stepping up recruitment activities and said that banks are understaff for implementing all schemes.

NOBW vice president Ashwani Rana also pitched for decent salary hike in the wage revision due in November this year.

“Wage revision of bank employees is due in November 2017.

Your government has already advised IBA to implement it on due date. We wish to bring to your kind notice that bank employees are far behind government employees in salary structure. Kindly give a good rise to bank employees and bring them at par with Govt employees,” it said.

In his address to the nation, Prime Minister had said “during this period, bank employees have worked day and night.

Female employees too worked till late hours as part of this mission”.

Post office staff, banking correspondents - all did exceptional work, he had said.

New Delhi, Jan 2 (PTI) Banks are expected to bring down lending rates by 50-75 basis points in April-September if the Reserve Bank injects liquidity worth Rs 2,20,000 crore through open market operations, says a report.

An open market operation (OMO) is a market operation conducted by RBI by way of sale or purchase of government securities to or from the market with an objective to adjust rupee liquidity conditions on a durable basis.

According to Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofA-ML), lending rate cuts will cushion the hit from the demonetisation shock in the second half of 2017.

“We expect them to cut effective lending rates by 50-75 bps cut in the April-September slack season if the RBI OMOes Rs 2,200 billion in 2017-18,” BofA-ML said in a research note.

Demonetisation has led to a jump in bank deposit as withdrawals are restricted and blackmoney cash is switching to the banking channel.

“After normalisation, however, we estimate the durable accretion to bank deposits at about Rs 2,000 billion,” the report said.