BEFI unhappy with slow progress of talks on its demands

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Jamshedpur, May 4: The Bank Employees Federation of India (BEFI), the fourth largest among the nine unions forming the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU), is unhappy with the slow progress in negotiations on the memorandum of understanding the UFBU signed with the government on February 25, 2008.

The UFBU's major demands include granting of another opportunity to bank employees for opting pension, restoration of jobs on compassionate ground, stopping outsourcing of core function jobs to private agencies, filling up the vacancies, stopping merger/acquisitions of public sector banks, etc.

Attending the 21st biennial conference of the Uco Bank Employees Association (UCBEA) of Bihar & Jharkhand here on Sunday, B Prasad, vice-president of the BEFI and the state secretary of the UCBEA, said: "Two and a half months have already passed and there has not been any settlement yet on the pension issue."

While around 62% of bank employees were deprived of the pension benefits, those covered too were beneficiaries of a 'truncated' pension at a frozen basic salary, Prasad said. According to him, actuarial calculations got done recently by bank unions showed the need for a corpus of Rs 4,727 crore spread over a period of 10 years.

"They (the nationalised banks) are writing off Rs 10,000-12,000 crore every year as non performing assets, but are dilly-dallying on making an annual provision of Rs 500 crore for seven to eight lakh workers (in the industry)," Prasad said.

An independent agency recently did actuarial calculations for the IBA on pension provisions to be made by each bank.

"The IBA conveyed us on April 30, 2008 that it has received the actuary's report on pension provisions to be made by different banks," said Ashoke Ghosh, national president of the Uco Bank Employees Association. The IBA was now likely to call a meeting on the subject in the third week of this month, he added.

On the issue of jobs on compassionate grounds, Prasad said though the banks had finalised lists of such candidates, the finance ministry was now saying that it was not in favour of that, and would prefer compensation packages in lieu of appointments. "But a compensation package won't serve the purpose", said Prasad.

The UFBU would submit its suggestions on outsourcing of core function jobs to the IBA for its consideration, Ghosh said. The suggestions were finalised at the UFBU meeting held on April 25. The IBA would send those to the Centre, Ghosh said.