THE PUNISHMENT BRANCH

The CTS inward clearing is a time bound process, which needs to be completed before 3.00 p.m. approx. in the afternoon. It is monitored by NPCI, a Government body.  

A newly appointed Probationary Officer reported at one of the Clearing house of a top ranking Indian Public sector bank in Pune, Maharashtra, and the sub-staff asked him during his first interaction, “What did you do?” This PO was shocked. He replied, “Nothing. Why?” The sub-staff enquired, “Then why did you get posted here? This is a punishment branch!”

The Indian public sector banks have successfully maintained certain branches as punishment branches, for their staff. This particular clearing house is actually a place where newly appointed PO’s are sent to work hard for the comfort of the old senior officers. These PO’s take all the risk involved in passing the cheques of their bank presented by the other banks in inward clearing. While the seniors pass the time pretending to work.

The roles of the newly appointed Probationary Officers are modified by manipulating the system. A scale – I Probationary Officer is assigned the role of a Chief Manager (The role of a Branch Manager), to enable him to pass the high value cheques i.e. cheques with a value of Rs 2,00,000/- and above. The Scale – II officers in this branch do not login as Senior Managers to take care of the high value cheques.  Thus the Probationary Officers have to take the risk for the comfort of their seniors. They pass cheques upto Rs 25,00,000/-. The Probationary Officers working in the branches are empowered to transfer amount of Rs 1,00,000/- pay cash upto Rs 50,000/- but in CTS Clearing they are told that the limit is Rs 25,00,000/- for which they have no circular. It is really an exploitation of the new officers because they are not aware of their rights and duties.

In case anything goes wrong, this new officer will be forced to pay from his pocket. This generally happens in all the Indian Public sector banks.