CHANDIGARH: All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) has extended its full support to Bank Employees for their strike on 16th and 17th December, 2021 against privatization of banks and Banking Laws (Amendment) Bill 2021.
AIPEF Chairman Shailendra Dubey has appealed to the Prime Minister and Finance Minister to withdraw the proposed Bill facilitating the privatization of Banks.
AIPEF Spokesperson V K Gupta said that the pursuit of privatisation as a state policy weather in the power sector or banking sector necessarily shrinks the space
for the state to be able to fulfill its constitutionally guaranteed role, which would result in long term adverse impacts in empowering the
disadvantaged communities.
NITI Aayog has recommended the privatisation of at least the two public sector banks and Banking Laws (Amendment) Bill 2021 is result of this. The privatization of public sector banks is an anti-worker, anti-people and anti-social step. Time and again, workers have found that the privatization of a PSU has led to hundreds of workers getting thrown out of their jobs. Contractualisation, an outcome of deregulations and privatisation puts the workers outside the scope of the laws governing reservation thereby
subverting the affirmative action.
Private banks will no more be run for fulfilling social needs but purely In pursuit of private profit. After private banks entered the field, banking services have become much more expensive and unaffordable. Privatization has also led to higher and higher use of contract workers who are employed at reduced wages than regular workers and are made to work longer hours without overtime.
The NDA government is committed to an aggressive push towards privatisation of national assets having a bare minimal presence in “strategic” sectors and this needs to be opposed by all the employees working in the public sector. undertakings across the country.
Power sector engineers & employees have a common cause with bank employees since the Government has decided to privatize the electricity distribution network and hand them over to the same agencies that have bled both the power and banking sectors.