Calcutta, July 7: Major bank unions have called a two-day nationwide strike on August 28 and 29 as talks with the management and the central labour commissioner failed to yield any fruit.

The decision was taken at a meeting in Calcutta on Sunday (July 6), attended by nine organisations representing workmen and officers of the banking sector. Union representatives said the ``indifferent'' attitude of the government to their July 4 strike has compelled them to launch a more aggressive agitation. The central labour commissioner has called a conciliation meeting in Delhi on July 16. The general secretaries of the nine unions will be attending the meeting jointly and will make necessary submissions to the commissioner.

Before the July 4 strike, there had been two rounds of meetings with the deputy CLC, both of which were inconclusive. The unions have declared their opposition to the establishment of local area private banks, which according to them is a "ploy to hand over rural economy and banking to private sector". As a run-up to the strike, bank employees will stage a mass rally before Parliament House in New Delhi on August 4. On August 22, they will organise at all state capitals and district headquarters, by the committee members of the constituent unions (forming the United Forum of Bank Unions). Towards the end of this month, a national convention will be held in Delhi, while between August 16 and 27, state conventions will be held in all the state capitals. Rallies will staged in each state with a representation to the respective chief ministers explaining the issues on the basis of which the employees are staging their protest. Other demands include implementation of pension settlement in private banks, rejection of the Mahalik Committee report on the wage structure of regional rural banks, deletion of the "illegal" provision that a bank employee would forfeit his past service in the event of participation in the strike and ban on non-banking finance companies on accepting deposits from the public.

Meanwhile agency reports from Delhi said a joint forum of bank officials and workers from all over the country will soon undertake a `march to parliament' in protest against privatisation of the banking sector and to press for reforms in the banking system. According to Ashish Sen, general secretary of the Indian Bank Employees' Association (IBEA), the government had been encouraging private banking system at the cost of nationalised banks under the premise of the new economic policy.

``This tendency must be shaken off because privatisation in the banking sector will not let the benefits of the government sponsored development programmes and those of the banks reach the masses,''. Due to bank nationalisation, banking services were made available to the rural populace. The nationalised banks or their rural units operate with a sense of social responsibility but the sole objective of the private banks was making profit, Sen said. Sen said the private banks will take the deposits from the rural masses and instead of investing them locally they invest the deposits in the industries based in the urban areas depriving the rural populace of the benefits they need most.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.