After a gap of 10 days, bank officials and staff got a little breather with the confining of exchange to senior citizens on Saturday. One could find smaller queues in almost all branches of the State Bank of India, Andhra Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Indian Bank and ICICI bank among others.
A majority of the bank employees were completely exhausted working for over 12 hours and sometimes even 18 hours a day without even proper food for the last few days. The plight of the employees with health issues like fever, diabetes and high blood pressure was even worse.
“Our staff were prepared psychologically to work for 18 hours a day. Otherwise, it is difficult to serve the common people who are also stressed due to lack of money. Saturday is really a blessing in disguise with the shorter and lesser queues,” said P. Chiranjeevi, representative of the Andhra Bank Employees’ Association. SBI Employees’ Association representative R. Narendra said, “It is really a tedious and stressful job. What staff did was commendable.”
A retired official of Bank of Baroda B Purushottama Rao said shortage of staff was a major concern for the banks.
