Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Strike in SBT over merger bid today

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Two major unions in the banking sector will observe a day’s strike on Thursday in the associate banks of State Bank of India (SBI) in protest against the move to merge them with the parent bank.

The unions that have issued the call for the strike are the All India Bank Employees’ Association (AIBEA) and the All India Bank Officers’ Association.

In a press release on Wednesday, State Bank of Travancore (SBT), one of the associate banks of SBI, said the strike might affect the normal functioning of its branches, although “the bank is making all efforts to minimise the disruption of services.”

At a press conference here on Wednesday, AIBEA general secretary C.H. Venkitachalam said that the authorities were proceeding with the merger proposal arguing that SBI should be strengthened to make it a player in the global banking sector. Strengthening SBI should not be at the expense of the associate banks, he said. Besides SBT, the banks in which the two unions are resorting to strike on Thursday are State Bank of Patiala, State Bank of Mysore, State Bank of Hyderabad, State Bank of Indore and State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur.

Mr. Venkitachalam said these associate banks of SBI had grown and prospered over the years, making substantial contributions to the economy of the States in which they had predominant presence. For instance, SBT was the biggest bank in Kerala with 573 branches. Both in terms of the number of branches and the volume of business, it was far ahead of the parent bank, SBI.

With the merger, the State would lose the most dedicated partner in its economic growth, since the concerns of the banking entity emerging through the merger would be quite different from those of SBT. The same would be the fate of the other States where the other banks proposed to be merged with SBI have predominant presence, he said.

Mr. Venkitachalam said that such merger of banks would lead to banking monopoly in the country.

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