KARACHI: HBL sacks over 2,000 employees: Action condemned
KARACHI, March 10: The Habib Bank Limited (HBL) has retrenched all non-clerical cadre employees with immediate effect in an effort to rationalize staff strength and focus on core banking activities.
An announcement of HBL said on Friday that the bank had abolished the entire cadres of manual workers with immediate effect under a retrenchment order of March 10.
The order further said that it had been decided to concentrate on core banking activities and retrench all non-clerical cadres including guards, messengers, godown guards, drivers, maintenance staff and other categories of manual workers.
The bank has also decided to outsource services with service providers for providing quality and efficient services at competitive market rates.
Currently, there are over 2,300 employees working in the HBL dedicated to non-core activities including security, transport and other manual work.
The announcement said the administration and management of these activities were causing a severe lack of focus on core activities like business development and customer services.
The bank said the management had offered a voluntary separation scheme in December 2005, but the response to this scheme, unlike earlier schemes, did not achieve the desired results and the bank had to go ahead with the retrenchment.
The bank has decided to pay ex gratia in addition to normal retirement benefits to these retrenched employees, which included an amount equivalent to 90 months basic pay, post retirement medical facilities, benevolent fund grant and leave encashment depending on the length of service.
In addition, the retrenched employees including guards can get re-employment in the newly created companies Excellency Limited and Collateral Services Limited.
WORKERS’ DEMO: Meanwhile, a large number of sacked non-clerical employees of the Habib Bank Limited held a protest demonstration on Friday in front of the HBL Plaza on the I I Chundrigar Road against their retrenchment.
These employees, who learnt about their termination Friday morning through local dailies, were enraged over the manner they were asked not to come to their jobs and said it was a gift of the government’s privatization policy.
They chanted slogans against the new administration of the HBL, Privatization Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh and demanded their reinstatement.
Separately, the Habib Bank Workers Front Pakistan at a urgent meeting on Friday to review retrenchment of around 2,500 workers from the HBL termed the retrenchment economic murder of lower-grade employees.
The meeting presided over by Haji Muhammad Yaqoob and attended by Syed Nadra Perveen, Fazl Kareem Aurakzai, held the government responsible.
It demanded of the bank administration to withdraw termination orders, reinstate all employees and let them complete their employment till superannuation.
The labour leaders urged the HBL employees to remain united and continue struggle for their reinstatement.
Meanwhile, the PML-N condemning the retrenchment of 2,500 HBL employees has alleged that the government was following the policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
In a statement, PML-N Sindh President Mamnoon Hussain said instead of providing relief to masses, the government had left workers at the mercy of private owners of national institutions who had nothing to do with miseries of people.
Leader of the opposition in the City Council Saeed Ghani has also strongly condemned retrenchment of employees by the HBL,
In a statement on Friday, he demanded all political, non-political, social welfare and human rights organizations to get these workers reinstated by pressuring the bank.
Ghani, who is also patron-in-chief of the MCB Staff Union of Pakistan (Shaheed Usman Ghani Group) ridiculed the manner in which the employees were terminated.—PPI/APP
