New Delhi Despite lockdown, banks have witnessed a huge influx of people across their branches in India. This is mainly due to the disbursement of various incentives to the poor section of the society and pensioners.
Speaking to The Free Press Journal, Devidas Tuljapurkar, General Secretary, MSBEF, said, “We have written to the Chief Minister of Maharashtra to look into this situation. Despite the lockdown, there are customers coming to the branches and standing in line without maintaining the requisite distance.” He added this is not helping the whole idea of social distancing to contain the spread of Coronavirus.
There is a need for the government to request these customers to avoid visiting banks and crowding it. The bank union has requested the state government of Maharashtra to deploy one police each at the entrance of all the branches.
“This will help regulate the rush and also to ensure that sufficient distance is maintained.” The union is seeking deployment of medical or paramedical staff at the entrance to verify whether the customers entering the branches have symptoms of Coronavirus.
This issue can only be addressed by either having Banking Correspondents (BCs) to deliver the cash to the customers directly or an alternate day mechanism for the customers, stressed Tuljapurkar.
While medical staff are frontline workers, Tuljapurkar stated banking officials are also in the frontline as they interact with a large number of customers without knowing if they are infected or not. “There should be group insurance for banking officials too.”
In order to avoid senior citizens from coming to banks, the union has urged the State Treasury Department to issue ATM cards to the pensioners. He informed increasing the work time of bank employees and lifting the alternate day reporting by the employees at the workplace are not the right move.
