KOCHI: The Bank Employees Federation of India (BEFI) has petitioned the Union finance minister Arun Jaitley against the decision of the State Bank of India not to consider candidates who default in repayment of loans for employment in State Banks.
It said that this would adversely affect students who have taken education loans. In a letter sent to the minister on Monday, the federation’s general secretary Pradip Biswas, said the organisation’s attention was drawn to the “Advertisement No.CRPD/CR/2016-17/01” issued by the “Central Recruitment & Promotion Department"” of the “State Bank of India” (SBI) inviting applications for recruitment in the clerical cadre of the bank.
The advertisement, inter alia, provides that “candidates with a record of default in repayment of loans/credit card dues and/or against whose name adverse reports of CIBIL or other external agencies are available are not eligible to apply for the post”.
“While we are well aware of, and fully appreciate, the concern for the alarming proportions of NPAs severely affecting the financial health of banks, we think that there would be a good number of candidates who have availed themselves of an ‘education loan’ from SBI or from any other bank for acquiring requisite qualification/s necessary to become eligible to get hired by potential employers, including banks. Such borrowers (i.e. those availing ‘education loan’ from the banking system) should not be equated and considered at par with ‘wilful defaulters’ in the strict commercial sense of the term,” Biswas said.
He added that it was very natural that this group of borrowers could start repaying their debts only when gainfully employed. “Closing the doors of employment to them would not only put them to hardship but would also adversely affect the prospects of recovering debts by the concerned lending institutions,” Biswas pointed out. He asked the finance minister to suitably advise the authorities concerned appropriately.
to add an
appropriate rider in the aforesaid proviso to ensure that the candidates/applicants who
have availed themselves of ‘education loan’ are not pushed out of the range of
consideration for recruitment in SBI or in any other public sector bank.
