The Union Government’s effort, RBI guidelines and State Bank of India’s (SBI) ambitious digitisation drive to bring improvement in customers service in the banks seem to have produced no results.
Here, repeated requests of the public to get the pass book updating machines functional in SBI Gandhinagar and Bhapur Bazar branches remain unheeded.
Most of the time, the pass book updating machines remain inoperative on some pretext or the other. The assistants sitting on the counters are refusing the customers to update their pass books on the pretext that they have been instructed by the higher authorities not to update any pass book in the counter. Our Correspondent observed the similar scenario in the Uco Bank and HDFC bank. As a result, a large number of customers and senior citizens who came to the bank in hot summer to ascertain whether they have required balance in their account, to spend during lockdown period, had no other option except to return home with a heavy heart, said a senior citizen who did not wish to be identified.
The SBI remains open with scanty staff, inadequate to meet the emerging workload during Covid-19 lockdown period. The higher authorities at the top level of SBI seem to have paid least attention on the day to day management. For instance, the Gandhinagar Branch whose existing level of business is Rs 140 crore and caters to 8,000 customers is suffering from severe manpower crunch.
According to information available, this branch which started on market demand in 2006 is reportedly transacting , on an average, Rs 1 crore every day, but is currently having only three staffers including the Branch Manager.
Similarly, when a senior citizen after remaining in queue for half an hour approached one counter at Bhapur Bazar Branch of SBI to get a tax certificate, the staff in charge of the counter replied that they will attend first to monetary transactions or payments and asked the senior citizen to wait and later issued the certificate.
There is a strong public perception here that each bank in Brahmapur should have an exclusive single window counter for the senior citizens to which the bank authorities have turned deaf ears.