Vijayawada: Bank employees oppose privatisation of 2 banks

Vijayawada: Protesting the Central government move to privatise two public sector banks, the members of United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) staged a demonstration at Dharna Chowk here on Friday.

The UFBU which has ten lakh members gave a call to all the bank employees to go on prolonged agitation against the privatisation move.

Addressing the gathering, Y Srinivasa Rao, secretary of the union, said that bad loans and non-performing assets are increasing year after year because of corporate defaulters.

Instead of taking tough action against the defaulters, the government wants to whitewash the balance sheets by shifting these bad loans from the books of the banks to the Bad Bank to be created for this purpose. He said that this would benefit the corporate defaulters as they will repurchase their assets from Bad Bank at throwaway price.

He said that the bank employees and officers under UFBU decided to launch an agitation against these retrograde, anti-people, anti-worker and anti-farmer policies of the Central government.

As part of the agitation, the bank employees will go on two days strike on March 15 and 16 opposing the government move two privatise two public sector banks along with IDBI Bank, disinvestment of LIC, allowing massive FDI in insurance sector, sale of public sector undertakings.