Govt staff threatens indefinite stir

pune: thousands of employees from nationalised banks, public sector insurance companies and the maharashtra state electricity board (mseb) joined the daylong nationwide strike against the government’s "anti-labour, economic policies." speaker after speaker at various protest rallies held in the city threatened an indefinite strike over the issue. hundreds of employees from the nationalised banks staged demonstrations in front of lokmangal, the head office of the bank of maharashtra.leaders addressing the employees decried the government’s decsion to do away with controls and safeguards in labour laws. the bank leaders claimed that more than 10,000 workers had joined the strike on tuesday. however, the atms all over the city functioned normally. private banks were not hit by the strike. the mseb employees affiliated to maharashtra veej kamgar mahasangh, intuc, workers’ federa-tion and subordinate engineers’ association also struck work on tuesday. the leaders were critical of the state’s move to break the board into three different corporations for generation, transmission and generation. union leaders reiterated the longstanding demand for a pension scheme. the mseb union leaders claimed that none of the bill-collection centres in the city worked on tuesday, causing a revenue loss of rs 1 crore to the board. more than 5,000 employees of mseb, pune rural zone also joined the strike, claimed the leaders. the insurance employees staged protests outside the commonwealth building on laxmi road for over an hour. employees from various nationalised banks attend a protest rally at lokmangal, bank of maharashtra headquarters, shivajinagar, as part of a day-long strike on tuesday.