KOCHI: With the banking sector losing 1,300 lives due to Covid across the country — 21 in Kerala so far — the pressure is building on the government to include the bank employees in the frontline workers (FLW) category for Covid vaccination.As per a note prepared by the All India Bank Employees’ Association (AIBEA), the Covid infection and the death toll in the banking sector is much higher when compared to the fatalities per population in the country. For instance, as of April 19, the number of Covid deaths of bank employees as a percentage of its total employee strength is 0.10 per cent while it’s 0.02 per cent in the country as a percentage of total population.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, in his daily presser in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday, said the government was actively considering to classify bank employees as frontline workers.K S Krishna, national joint secretary, AIBEF, said Kerala lost six bank employees in the first wave of the pandemic and another 15 in the second wave. “We observe that while the number of people infected under the second wave is much higher, especially in the number of deaths. This is creating a lot of scare and panic amongst the bank employees,” said the AIBEF note.
In Kerala, eight employees of SBI alone have succumbed to Covid. C D Josson, AKBEF general secretary, said SBI reported seven deaths after May 2 (the day of counting), which has sent a scare among the banking members. “We are not taking into consideration other deaths where family members working in bank branches get exposed to Covid and transmit the disease at home,” said Joson.
“We expect an announcement (on FLW for bank employees) to come on Tuesday itself,” he said.AIBEA’s general secretary C H Venkatachalam, in a release, said: “Our cry to treat bank employees under priority for vaccination was not taken seriously by the central government and now only some ‘requests’ are being sent to the state governments. Even now, there is no directive to this effect from the central government. Bank employees feel ignored by the government.”
He said bank employees are also facing innumerable problems in commuting to their branches and offices due to curbs imposed by the various state governments. Many employees and officers have faced humiliation, ill-treatment, manhandling, abuses etc from the local police personnel while they were travelling to their branches and return.