Chennai: The All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) has announced a nationwide strike on Friday, to protest against the centre’s attitude towards the banking sector. With around 10 lakh bankers joining the strike, banking operations in more than 80,00 branches all over the country is expected to be greatly crippled on Friday. Saturday, however, is a full working day.

The clearing of around 26 lakh cheques, adding up to Rs. 19,000 crores will be affected by the one-day strike.

The strike call comes following the government’s stepped up efforts to merge the five associate banks of State Bank of India – State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur (SBBJ), State Bank of Hyderabad (SBH), State Bank of Mysore (SBM), State Bank of Patiala (SBP), and State Bank of Travancore (SBT) – with the main SBI, and its decision to privatise IDBI.

Negotiations and talks with the centre and the Indian Banks Association (IBA) were held on July 26 to resolve the situation, but that ended in a failure with the IBA trying to justify the centre’s stand on the merger and privatisation.

Dismissing reports of a case filed in court by the IBA to prevent the UFBU from calling for the strike, C.H. Venkatachalam, the general secretary of AIBEA, confirmed that the strike was on.

The UFBU (United Forum of Bank Unions) consisting of nine major trade unions – AIBEA, AIBOC, NCBE, AIBOA, BEFI, INBEF, INBOC, NOBW and NOBO. The bankers had earlier called for a two-day strike on July 12 and 13, but that was dropped after the Delhi High Court issued a restraining order.

“We wanted to strike pressing our views when the Parliament is in session,” he said.

The unions are also striking against the government’s decision expand the private sector banks, outsourcing loan recovery to corporate houses who themselves are owe a lot of money to the banks, and extending concessions to big defaulters.

While the total quantum of bad loans owed to the public sector banks stand at a staggering Rs. 539,995 crores as on March 31, 2016, he accused the government of not taking tough measures to recover the bad loans. “Even their (defaulters’) names are not being published,” he said.