Two-day nationwide bank strike begins
Chennai, May 30: The two day bank strike by over 10 lakh bankers demanding early wage settlement starting Wednesday has evoked good response nationwide, said a top leader of the All India Bank Employees' Association.
"Around 85,000 bank branches spread across the country, including that of State Bank of India and some private banks will remain closed for two days. The response to the strike is good," C.H. Venkatachalam, General Secretary, AIBEA told IANS.
Queried about the value and volume of money instruments that would not be cleared by the bank's clearing houses Venkatachalam said: "On all India basis clearance of 39 lakh instruments with a value of Rs 21,700 crore per day would be impacted.
"The above value and volume were the averages of last 15 days clearance of instruments."
The May 30-31 strike is spearheaded by the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU), an umbrella body of nine unions.
The bankers are striking work demanding early revision of the wages. The wage revision has been due since November 1, 2017.
Venkatachalam said the unions had requested the Indian Banks' Association (IBA) to come up with better offer than the mere two per cent hike offer made earlier so that the strike could be averted.
He said the IBA was also asked not to delink the wage negotiations for bank officers in the Scales 4-7. The IBA did not do anything.
He said at the conciliation meeting held on Monday, the Chief Labour Commissioner (CLC) had asked the IBA not to raise new controversies like delinking the wage talks for officers in the 4-7 scale.
"Though the CLC tried its best to sort out the strike issues, there is no positive developments. Hence strike on May 30 and 31 (Wednesday and Thursday) stands," All India Bank Officers' Confederation (AIBOC) General Secretary D.T. Franco had said earlier.
According to Venkatachalam, with regard to the coverage of officers from Scale 4-7, the IBA said it did not get the mandate from six banks as they opted to cover officers up to Scale 3 level.
However, 14 banks have given the mandate for covering the officers up to Scale 7 in wage negotiations as was done in the previous wage settlement negotiations, he said.
With bank branches closed for two days, the ATM machines are being loaded with additional cash to meet any contingency.
"The private banks (like HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank) are working and there is no problem there. In the case of public sector banks the strike call was known well ahead. So, we have collected cash in advance from the banks for loading in the ATMs," V. Balasubramanian, President, Financial Software and Systems (FSS), told IANS.
The city based FSS manages ATMs for several banks in the country.
"Generally we know the cash dispensation per day per ATM. We load the machines with cash for two days transaction value which is at an average is around Rs 6 lakh. This time we have loaded ATMs with cash of around Rs 15 lakh which would take care of the average cash dispensation for four days," Balasubramanian said.
According to him, the ATMs are loaded more with Rs 500 notes.
The Bank of Maharashtra MD and CEO Ravindra P Marathe has urged his customers to make the maximum use of digital banking services for their transcations as the strike might disrupt normal banking services at the branches.
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574 players for IPL auctions: 366 Indians, Pant, Iyer in top bracket, 13-year-old Vaibhav youngest
New Delhi, Nov 15: Rishabh Pant, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul and Arshdeep Singh will headline a 574-strong list of players with top base price of Rs 2 crore at the upcoming Indian Premier League auction scheduled in Saudi Arabia's Jeddah on November 24 and 25.
Thirteen-year-old India U-19 cricketer Vaibhav Suryavanshi from Bihar is the youngest among the lot at Rs 30 lakh base price.
The BCCI on Friday pruned the initial list of 1574 players down to 574 out of which 366 are Indians and 208 from overseas. All the current India players are in top base price bracket.
Apart from Pant, set to be the costliest buy at the auction with a team like Punjab Kings aiming to go the distance with Rs 110.50 crore in its kitty, the other big names include IPL winning captain Shreyas Iyer, India's most prolific T20I bowler Arshdeep Singh, KL Rahul, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Yuzvendra Chahal and Avesh Khan.
There are 81 players in the top bracket while 27 are in Rs 1.5 crore category. There are 18 in the Rs 1.25 crore category while 23 have priced themselves at Rs 1 crore.
Jos Buttler of England also enjoys the top base price bracket of Rs 2 crore along with countrymen Harry Brook and Jonny Bairstow while the retired James Anderson, at Rs 1.25 crore base price, has made it to the curtailed list despite T20 not being his strongest format.
The biggest names in the top bracket from overseas are Kagiso Rabada, Anrich Nortje from South Africa, Glenn Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis, Mitchell Starc from Australia. Marco Jansen and Rachin Ravindra are priced at Rs 1.25 crore.
There are 48 capped Indians while 193 are capped overseas players.
Former India U-19 World Cup winning skipper Unmukt Chand, who has migrated to the United States, has made the cut as Associate member nation player while seamer Saurabh Nethravalkar, who was a revelation during T20 World Cup, wasn't shortlisted.
Italy's Thomas Draca, who plays for MI Emirates, also didn't make the cut.
