Sustained effort by the Banking Ombudsman of the State to create awareness about its services among customers of the banking service in rural areas has resulted in a surge of complaints from rural areas. It has also sharply reversed the declining trend in the number of complaints in the last three years.
Presenting the performance for the year 2014-15 at a Press meet here on Monday, Banking Ombudsman (BO) of Odisha Bijay Kumar Mishra said the awareness campaigns has resulted in a growth of over 63 per cent in the number of complaints received in the last financial year. The total number of complaints received went up from 1,498 in 2013-14 to 2,448 in 2014-15. The share of complaints from the rural areas in the total number of complaints went up by 10 per cent while the share of those from urban and semi-urban areas declined.
All the complaints were disposed of, but significantly, over 62 per cent of the complaints shown as disposed of were actually rejected as being non-maintainable for a variety of reasons. These used be in the range of mid-thirties in earlier years.
In answer to a question as to the fate of the complaints that were rejected as non-maintainable, Mishra clarified that while those were rejected on various grounds the concerned branch was always informed of the complaint along with an advice to look into the grievance of the customer. In most cases, the concerned branch of the bank took care of the customer’s grievance informed to it in this manner.
According to the BO, the emphasis in the period under discussion was more on mutual settlement and the two reconciliation camps, one each at Puri and Gopalpur, to bring the reconciliation process to the doorsteps of the customers was a huge success where 41 complaints were settled.
The report shows the number of complaints against the State Bank of India, which used to be the target of the highest number of complaints, has come down by 8 per cent. The complaints against all other nationalised banks taken together are just a couple of percentage points below the State Bank’s figures. Earlier, the gap used to be almost 20 per cent. Similarly, the complaints relating to debit card, ATM card and pass words have declined.
The Banking Ombudsman at Bhubaneswar was established in 1996 to provide a quick and inexpensive redressal mechanism under the Banking Ombudsman Scheme (BOS) to the aggrieved customers of commercial banks and Regional Rural Banks. It has jurisdiction over 41 commercial banks and two Regional Rural Banks spread over the State’s 30 districts.