‘Bankers shouldered worst impact of note ban’

As bank customers suffered by waiting in long queues to withdraw their money from November onwards last year, another group of people -- bank employees -- endured the hardship of extended work hours and customer anger. The employees, say bank unions, bore the major brunt of the sudden decision announced on November 8 last year by the Prime Minister.

"Banking personnel were rigorously working towards recovery of bad loans before the announcement of demonetisation, but the entire drive of recovery got derailed after the announcement as employees had to work day and night for giving service to depositors," Sanjay Das, Assistant General Secretary of the All India Bank Officers' Confederation, told IANS. The bank unions said that of the more than 100 persons who lost their lives during the demonetisation chaos, over 10 were bank employees and officers.

Das said that despite the enormous amount of extra work put in by the employees, very few were compensated. "Over 50 per cent of employees and officers are yet to get their compensation for the extra work they did during the demonetisation period," Das said. According to C.H. Venkatachalam, General Secretary of the All India Bank Employees' Association, the whole experience had left "a big scar in the minds of bankers".

He said a million bank employees handling 1,000 million people coming to branches to deposit old notes was certainly a big task. He said the bankers were abused by the general public for not disbursing new notes and diverting the same to others.

"The RBI made matters worse by saying that sufficient number of new notes were disbursed to banks," he added. He said the bank managements were not bothered about the problems faced by branch of ficials.