No a/c, contractual staff find it tough

Ambika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Solan, December 1

The contractual staff employed in various industrial units of the state’s industrial hub of Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh (BBN) was facing maximum inconvenience in availing salaries after demonetisation of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes as majority of them were yet to open bank accounts.

As per an estimate each industrial unit has about 20-30 per cent contractual employees who were hitherto disbursed salary in cash. With little cash being available all these employees have been directed to open bank accounts.

Banks in the BBN, who were flooded with such requests, were facilitating the investors by deputing their officials in the industrial units.

Employees could be seen queued up for completing the formalities and despite the exercise having begun a few days ago not more than 10-12 accounts could be opened in one unit, confided JS Kang, Plant Head, Elin Appliances, Baddi. Bank officials have been camping in the unit for the last few days to open new accounts.

With banks accepting only original Aadhar cards and declining the online copies a large number of migrant labourers were finding it difficult to open accounts. The situation was also worrisome as a majority of the employees neither had PAN cards or any other valid document which could be accepted by the banks.

Kang said they will request the banks to give some relaxation and accept ration cards, voter I-cards and other valid documents provided by the government as a large chunk of the contractual employees had only online copies of Aadhar cards.

The HR staff of various units has been directed by the managements to facilitate opening of bank accounts by December 7 which was the designated day of disbursing salaries.

Pramod Chandra, a senior official of Morepen Laboratories, Parwanoo, said it has become a Harculean task to open bank accounts of hundreds of employees before the designated salary day of December 7 as banks were already busy with other cash-related work after the demonetisation of Rs 5,00 and Rs 1,000 currency notes.

He wondered even if they credited the salaries to their accounts whether they would be able to withdraw it with the banks facing shortage of cash.

He said the unit managements were facing a difficult time and whenever they visited banks for withdrawing cash inadequate money was available.

Contrary to the RBI’s instructions for providing the banks up to 30 per cent additional cash in view of disbursement of salaries, the banks in the rural areas of BBN like Dhabota failed to get any extra cash today. Hari Ram Dhiman, Manager, PNB’s Dhabota branch, said they have not received any additional cash till this evening and the available cash was used to provide some relief to the pensioners today while those coming to withdraw salary were given tokens and asked to come tomorrow.

He said their employees were camping in various industrial units to facilitate opening of new accounts. As many as 60 accounts had been opened in a packaging unit and at least 30 more in another unit while employees working in brick kilns had also approached them.

He said it was, however, interesting to note that despite having disbursed new currency worth Rs 1 crore through their branch no new currency had been circulated back to the bank in the last three weeks and even in the petrol pumps people were still using the old scrapped currency notes.