The Office of the Banking Ombudsman (OBO) has claimed that the number of complaints related to disputes between banks and the customers has increased up to 38.1 per cent this year as compared to the figures recorded last year in State. The office disposed of 98.1 per cent of the total complaints taken up during the last financial year. Maximum numbers of complaints however, have been received against the State Bank of India and Associates, while complaints against the private banks were fewer.
“A steep rise of 71.8 per cent has been received in Jharkhand. Out of 1053 cases received by the office, 1030 cases have been disposed of,” said Barla.
Banking Ombudsman Patric Barla talking to the media persons in Ranchi referred intensive awareness programme conducted across the state as well as the growing level of public trust on the dispute resolution mechanism under BOS 2006 may be the reason for such a huge response from the common people.
“Patna dealt with a total of 3942 complaints during this financial year as against 2887 complaints during 2012-134 of which 3867 cases were disposed of while the remaining 75 cases were outstanding resulting into the an increase of 2.5 percent during the current year,” Barla added.
Barla further added that out of 3867 complaints in 2013-14, 1649 were maintainable while 2218 were classified as non-maintainable. Non-maintainable complaints includes the cases related to–first resort complaints, subject beyond BOS ambit outside the BO territorial jurisdiction, complaints against entities other than banks, complaints not properly presented, time barrred, earlier dealt cases, pending directed by court or any other forum, vivacious or expiry of limitation period etc.
Pension payments and ATM/Debit/Credit cards related issues were the largest single grounds of complaints forming 17.3 per cent and 15.9 percent of total complaints received during the year followed by failure to meet commitments and deposit accounts.
“High proportion of cards linked complaints was due to failure of ATM transactions, unauthorized withdrawal using lost or cloned cards, skimming of cards, frequent breakdown/ malfunction of ATM’s, delay in grievance redressal etc.” said Barla.
Pension related complaints on account of delay in payment of pension/arrears, incorrect calculation or payment of medical allowances had gone up to 48.1 percent over previous year, he added.