Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has failed to appreciate the role being played by the employees of the cooperative banking sector who are working hard catering to the needs of people. This has peeved co-operators connected with the sector.
In her “thank you” tweet, though Sitharaman has congratulated the staff of all public, private sector banks and bank mitras for their cooperation and hard work she did not extend the same courtesy to the staff of cooperative banks.
On 14th April the official social media handle of Nirmala Sitharaman wrote, “FM Smt @nsitharaman is extremely grateful to the 13.63 lakh bank staff of PSBs, Pvt Sector Banks and Small Finance Banks and 1.23 lakh Bank Mitras for their hard work and dedicated service to the nation”.
Several employees associated with cooperative banks have shared their disappointment and said, “Not counting cooperative bank staff as a dedicated team of bankers is shocking”.
It is being claimed that employees of cooperative banks have contributed hundreds of crores of rupees towards the relief funds. Also, across the country branches of cooperative banks are carrying out their daily transactions as before for their customers.
There is a big network of cooperative banks in India. As per the RBI data, there are 1544 of Urban Cooperative Banks in which Scheduled UCBs are 54, Multi-State Scheduled UCBs are 34, Single-State Scheduled UCBs are 20. The number of Non-Scheduled UCBs has been pegged at 1,490, the number of Single-State Non-Scheduled UCBs is 1,466 and Multi-State Non-Scheduled UCBs 24.