The All India Bank Officers' Association (AIBOA) has urged the government to enact stringent laws to recover burgeoning bad loans from defaulters.
“The immediate need of the hour is to fix the responsibility on the board of these banks, declare borrowers as wilful defaulters, amongst other steps instead of privatising public sector banks,” said S Nagarajan, General Secretary, AIBOA, which is the second largest trade union for bank officers in the country.
Currently, bad loans are estimated to be in the region of Rs 2.78 lakh crore, restructured bad loans of corporates at Rs 6 lakh crore, infrastructure loans at Rs 7 lakh crore and coal block bad loans at Rs 5 lakh crore.
“Nearly 30 per cent of the advances are bad loans and the government seems to be have taken a Nelson's eye approach,” V Ramabhadran, General Secretary, AIBOA, said.
The union has also asked the government to restore the right of representation to trade union leaders and the management of associate banks to abide by the industry level bipartite settlements.