Salary cut in BASIC Bank has sparked demonstrations with the staff on Sunday (Dec 29) confining the managing director, the chairman of the Board to their offices at the state-owned specialised bank's headquarters.
Agitated employees say that they won't let the top officials leave until the previous pay structure is reinstated.
In an unprecedented move, the state-owned bank has reduced salaries of its officials citing soaring losses.
The bank’s human resource division on Dec 22 issued a letter to all branch managers.
According to the letter, the decision was taken at the 487th meeting of the bank’s board on Dec 11.
The letter said, as Basic Bank continued to be a loss making concern over the last seven years, the ‘salary structure’ and all other employee benefits introduced in 2013 by the bank was scrapped.
The letter also noted that the bank was paying higher salary to its employees as compared to those of the other state-owned commercial banks.
According to the letter, from now on the officials of Basic Bank will get salary as per the ‘Service (Bank, Insurance, and Financial Institution) (Salary and Allowances) Ordinance 2015’, issued by the Implementation Section of the Finance Division under the Ministry of Finance.
In 2018, 18 out of the 68 branches of BASIC Bank were loss-making. The number increased to 33 in June this year.
The total cumulative loss of the bank stood at Tk 36 billion until 2018, including Tk 3.56 billion in last year.