Manager’s suicide prompts bank unions to flag ‘pressure’ factor

Unions say officer-level employees are forced to meet unreasonable targets

Ramesh (name changed), a branch manager of a public sector bank, has now almost lost track of the number of targets he has to meet. In addition to the traditional banking duties, he is supposed to hit the target on a variety of government schemes from Jan Dhan accounts and Mudra loans to Atal Pension Yojana and even the distribution of FASTags for vehicles and profit targets from the sale of third party products, including insurance schemes and mutual funds. Following the suicide of K.S. Swapna, manager of the Thokkilangadi branch of Canara Bank last week, citing stressful working conditions, banking unions have yet again taken up an issue which has been a constant concern for the past few years. The mergers of public sector banks, the push towards privatisation, lack of enough employees and new recruitments, expansion in duties of employees and harassment from higher-ups have led to a situation wherein officer-level employees spend much of the day at office, late into the night. Speaking to The Hindu, C.J. Nandakumar, president of the Bank Employees Federation of India (BEFI), says that the entire workload and responsibility land on the branch managers and officers.