PPBM says thanks to City Air News and other Media Houses

Ludhiana, October 10, 2012: City Air News, on October 4, 2012, had run the story under the headline “Clearing of cheques get delayed by PNB” on the basis of a statement given by Punjab Pradesh Beopar Mandal general secretary Mohinder Aggarwal.

Today, Aggarwal called City Air News office and told that the matter had been resolved with an initiative taken by City Air News and a few other Media Houses by highlighting problem of traders’ community.

He also thanked Regional Director, RBI in Chandigarh for considering their complaint sympathetically.

He told that a team of Punjab National Bank officials led by Ludhiana DGM (Circle Head) Arun Kumar Ahluwalia visited him yesterday and admitted that certain lapsed had occurred in the routine function.

He told that Ahluwalia assured them that they would take adequate and proper arrangements in case there come consecutive holidays in the future. He said Ahluwalia said rendering better service to customers was their priority. He said they would hold meetings with traders under the banner of Beopar Mandal in the future, to sort out their problems, if any, and also to get them apprise about various schemes of the banks.

Aggarwal told that they were satisfied with the assurances given by the bank officers. It may be mentioned here that Aggarwal, on October 4, 2012, had regretted that thousands of PNB account holders had to suffer because of late clearing of their cheques deposited on October 1.

Speaking to City Air News here, he had told that the local bank authorities took a plea that the delay had been caused because of holidays. But, he said even though customers were paying service charges to the bank yet they were getting deficient of services.

He had also told that the whole matter came to his notice by a large number of the bank account holders following which he took up the matter with the bank’s DGM Arun Kumar Ahluwalia and AGM AK Kalia.

But, both the officers had failed to convince Aggarwal following which he had written to Governor, RBI, so that no bank customer should suffer in the future because of holidays.

He had also pointed out that the bank authorities should have made adequate arrangements in prior to deal with the situation if they were aware that almost consecutive holidays were about to arrive. He had believed that the bank adopted pick and choose policy. He had said there were customers whose accounts were not showing ‘shadow balance” even today.