NEW DELHI: With PSB bank employees striking nation-wide against the government’s plans to privatise public sector banks, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said that all banks will not be privatised and that all the interests of workers would be protected.
“We have announced a public enterprise policy, where we have identified four areas where public sector presence will be there. In this, the financial sector too is there. Not all banks are going to be privatised,” Sitharaman told reporters during a press conference.
She added that even for those banks which are likely to be privatised, the institutions too will continue to function after privatisation; the interests of the staff will be protected. “Interests of workers of banks which are likely to be privatised will absolutely be protected whether their salaries or scale or pension all will be taken care of,” Sitharaman said.
The ongoing two-day strike by nine unions representing PSB workers has crippled financial transactions, with unions claiming that nearly 10 lakh bank staffers across the country have participated in the strike.
While private banks continued to work, operations in some states such as Maharashtra were badly crippled. Some bank employees have said that their protest will continue until the government withdraws its proposed privatisation and disinvestment plan.
Meanwhile, explaining the rationale behind the privatisation, Sitharaman said that banks in the country needed to be bigger, just like the State Bank of India (SBI). “We need banks which are going to be able to scale up... We want banks that are going to be able to meet the aspirational needs of this country,” Sitharaman said, adding that a lot of thought had gone behind the intention to privatise some public sector banks.
The finance minister also dismissed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s criticism of the bank privatisation move with his comment on social media, stating that he should engage in a “serious discussion” rather than “throwing one-liners every now and then” In his Twitter post, Rahul Gandhi had said that the government was “privatising profit and nationalising loss”.