State-owned BASIC bank employees staged demonstrations inside the bank's headquarters at Shena Kallyan Bhaban in Motijheel in the capital in protest against salary cut.
Agitated employees have been holding the members of the board of directors confined in the bank Chairman's room until writing of this report at 9:30pm on Sunday.
Demanding immediate reinstatement of the previous salary structure, they also confined the bank's Managing Director Md Rafiqul Alam to his office chamber for hours between 11:00am to 6:00pm and sought a discussion from the bank's board of directors.
They, however, agreed to move away in the evening on the day after the top management assured them of holding a meeting of the bank's board within this month to discuss the issue.
The bank Managing Director Md Rafiqul Alam told journalists in the evening that he and his team's senior members were discussing the board's decision over salary cut to find a peaceful solution.
"I am discussing the matter. Senior officials and representatives of the staff members are with me," Alam said.
He said the board chairman Alauddin A Majid was informed of the latest developments and he agreed to sit again this month to discuss the issue.
State-owned Basic Bank, in an unprecedented move, has reduced salaries of its officials citing soaring losses.
The bank's human resource division on Sunday issued a letter to all branch managers in this regard, said officials familiar with the procedure.
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 reduce 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 employee benefits introduced in 2013 by the bank was scrapped.
