Omicron : Issue necessary guidelines to banks : AIBEA

HYDERABAD, Jan 15: All India Bank Employees’ Association (AIBEA) on Saturday appealed to Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) Senior Advisor (HR &IR), Mumbai Brajeshwar Sharma to issue necessary guidelines to banks across the country in view of the Omciron threat, which is spreading very fast.
In a letter to Mr Sharma, a copy of which was e-mailed to UNI, AIBEA General Secretary Ch Venkatachalam said You are aware that as a third wave, the omicron infection is spreading very fast.
Already, number of employees and officers have been affected in the various Banks. It is reported that the spread will further aggravate in the weeks to come.
He said some of the Banks have given instructions for exemption of pregnant employees and persons with disabilities to be exempted from attendance and to work from home. Some Banks have instructions like 50 per cent of the staff to attend on rotation, etc.
We observe from the feed back from the field that the number of customers coming to the Branches has not come down or is not being restricted and regulated. As a result, the available staff are unable to attend to them properly leading to a lot of avoidable situations.
Further the earlier instructions on screening the customers before entering the branches, etc, are not being followed. This is leading to more possible infection amongst the staff since they come into contact with such customers, Mr Venkatachalam said.
Hence, the AIBEA General Secretary said, it has become very important to issue necessary guidelines to the Banks like limiting the number of staff for daily attending the branches keeping in mind the Business Continuity Planning (BCP) requirements, Employees can be asked to come to Banks on alternate days, frequent sanitising/fumigation of the premises, Frequent sanitising of ATMs,Staff to be supplied with adequate face masks, sanitisers, Restricting the business hours in Branches and Restricting banking transactions to priority items like earlier occasion.
Mr Venkatachalam said if Branches have to extend all normal banking services, the crowding cannot be avoided and spread of infection also cannot be controlled and added other Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) to deal with the situation has to be followed keeping in mind the Government guidelines.
We are aware that IBA is seized of these issues and the AIBEA request is to expedite the guidelines to the Banks, he added. (UNI)