Over 3000 bank employees and officers lost their lives while discharging their duties since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This was stated by All-India State Bank Officers’ Federation (AISBOF) General Secretary, Soumya Datta at a news conference in Shillong today.
“Over 3000 bank employees and officers laid down their lives to keep the wheel of the economy moving because we were not given vaccination on the first instance when the other Covid warriors had,” he said. It was only after repeated tweets and messages to the Prime Minister that bankers were ultimately recognized as ‘frontline workers’, he added.
Datta said that during the pandemic it was not just thousands of bankers who got infected, but their families too.
He lamented that the bankers were not recognised despite the fact that the public sector banks and the regional rural banks were the ones that worked hard during the pandemic and ensured that the Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT) reaches the grassroots.
Similarly, he said during demonetization these same sectors never got the recognition when out of 45 crores, 40 crore general accounts were opened.
