RRB employees on nation-wide three-day strike

Ramachandrapuram: Regional Rural Banks (RRB) employees called for nationwide three-day strike demanding parity with commercial banks in terms of service conditions, pay scale and other allowances. Opposing privatisation of RRBs and equal provision of Provident Fund and Pension rules and regularisation of temporary employees of RRBs, employees of APGVB at Beeramguda Kaman of Ramachandrapuram mandal, held a press meet about their strike on Tuesday.  

Addressing the media, the General Secretary of All India Regional Rural Banks Association (AIRRBA) Venkateshwar Reddy said they were fighting for the equality in all aspects on par with commercial banks for three years with the seven RRB Associations combined as United Forum for RRB Unions.  RRBs constituted in 1975 by the Parliamentary Act had been serving for the poor and weaker sections of the society and small and marginal farmers with 21,500 branches in 670 districts across the nation. 

RRBs are contributing lion’s share in the implementing government schemes by lending loans to 90 percent to the priority sector and 70 percent to the farming sector successfully for 42 years, he said. But, the government is trying to privatise the RRB banking sector which is quite atrocious. We, employees of RRBs across the nation have been discriminated in contrast with commercial and sponsor banks in wages, service, PF, pension, and other allowances.

Several academic and parliamentary committees had already declared that the RRBs are working with hundred percent success rates in achieving the prescribed targets every year. Despite the 3 verdicts ruled by Supreme Court and 18 verdicts by High Courts in India, the government is not implementing the parity with other banks. We have already met Union Ministers Arun Jaitley and Shiv Prasad Shukla on the same matter, but to no avail, reiterated Reddy.

In the inevitable conditions, we decided to fight for our demands by striking for three days from Mar 26 to March 28 with 86,000 employees across the nation participating in it. If the central government and banking governing body goes steadfast on the privatisation of RRBs and does not fulfil our demands, we will continue our fight with the indefinite strike after this three-day strike, warned the All India General Secretary of AIRRBA.