Staff Reporter :
The High Court on Sunday stayed for one month a decision of the meeting of the Board of Directors of BASIC Bank for an unprecedented move to reduce salaries of its officials citing soaring losses.
At the same time, the court issued a rule upon the respondents to explain in four weeks as to why the decision of the meeting of the Board of Directors of BASIC Bank reducing salaries of its officials citing soaring losses should not be declared illegal. .
The High Court Bench of Justice M Enayetur Rahim and Justice Md Mostafizur Rahman passed the order after hearing a petition filed in this regard.
Six officials of the bank filed the writ petition with the High Court challenging the decision of the Board of Directors.
Advocate AM Amin Uddin appeared in the court on behalf of the writ petition while Deputy Attorney General Amit Talukder stood for the state.
The bank’s Human Resource Division on December 22, 2019, issued a letter to all Branch managers in this regard.
According to the letter, the decision was taken at the 487th meeting of the bank’s board of Directors on December 11. A high official of the bank on condition of anonymity said, “At this point, we don’t have any alternative but to reduce salaries to survive. To save the bank, we must cut the bank’s expenditure.”
The letter said, as BASIC Bank continued to be a loss making concern over the last seven years, the ‘salary structure’ and all other employees’ 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 with 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.
The letter signed by General Manager (Human Resource Division) Ahmad Hossain also said that employee benefits beyond the ‘salary structure’ would be given on approval by the bank’s Board of Directors.
