Allahabad Bank in soup over loans to ex-ultras

GUWAHATI, February 18: The Allahabad Bank with 58 branches in the State has been facing the music over non-recovery of loans to surrendred ULFA men to the tune of Rs 3.50 crore over the years, informed office-bearers of the local unit of the All India Allahabad Bank Officers' Association (AIABOA) which is affiliated to the All India Bank Officers' Confederation (AIBOC). Addressing medipersons here yesterday, the office-bearers informed that recovery in this regard was almost nil putting a lot of strain on the management. As recovery measures quite a few suits have been filed against the State government which was a party to these loans. On the eve of holding the biennial conference of the Northeast Zone level of the Bank at Tourist Lodge near railway station here, the office-bearers said that 60 officials from the 67 branches of the Bank in the region are expected to participate in the convention. Biswabandhu Bhattacharya, national general secretary of the organisation in the press conference called upon the Union government for not pushing the public sector banks rowards doom by withdrawing the government shares to the minimum level and forcing them to go bankrupt through various means like lowering of CRR and Prime Lending Rates to the detriment of the depositors. Saying that 70 per cent of the deposits of all public sector banks came from the general masses while only about 4 per cent of the deposits actually came from corporate sector and big business houses, he said, despite this the Government is bent upon taking these banks towards privatisation for suiting the interests of the corporate houses. Speaking about the conditions the Bank staff have to face in their job, Bhattacharya said that there were 13 branches of the Allahabad Bank in the region (11 in Assam) where the bank manager is the sole employee against all norms of the management, whereaas the established ratio is 17 persons to one branch. Besides, five branches in the rural and semi-urban places of the State have virtually stopped functioning as the personnel in them had to escape from the areas under threats from ultras and under adverse law-and-order situation. To mitigate this problem the office-bearer stressed upon maximum local recruitment from this region so that the problem of officials from outside this region refusing to serve in this area was solved. However, so far this point has been totally neglected by the management much to the dissatisfaction of the Association.