National

Bank staff want reforms stopped

NEW DELHI: With the ongoing global financial crisis vindicating its anti-privatisation stand, the All-India Bank Employees’ Association (AIBEA) will organise major protests across the country to stop banking reforms forthwith and demand nationalisation of all private sector banks.

In a statement, AIBEA general secretary C.H. Venkatachalam said had the Indian banks been privatised and liberalised, the savings of the people would have been in peril. Many of these would have fallen victim to the financial tsunami as in the U.S. and Europe. Thanks to the employees’ continuous protests and struggles and the stubborn resistance by the Left, these banking reforms could be kept at bay, he pointed out.

The protests will be held on November 11, just a few days before the AIBEA holds its 26th conference here in the Capital. The financial crisis will be the main issue at the conference that will also demand strengthening and expansion of public sector banks and stress on expediting the process of non-productive assets recovery.

The recent events that have unfolded in the U.S. resulting in the massive crisis in the financial and banking sector have exposed the fallacy of these reforms policies of privatisation and unregulated free market. The giants of the free market were now crumbling like a pack of cards and had to be taken over and bailed out by the governments at the cost of tax-payers, Mr. Venkatachalam said.

He pointed out that this would also happen in India if the public sector banks and their huge deposits were handed over to private hands.

“It is high time that we demand the stopping of the banking reforms policies. We also need to demand nationalisation of all private banks and takeover of foreign banks. What our country needs is further strengthening and expansion of public sector banks to empower the masses and make our banks vibrant nation-building institutions,” he said.

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