Jammu : The J&K Khidmat Centres Association in a press meeting at press club Jammu said that their whole project stands sabotaged. Official apathy and insensitiveness has mercilessly damaged the careers of the 1300 plus professionals. It is on the promises of the J&K Bank that these Khidmat Centres were established in 2009 and later after proper selection and panel interviews. They said the Khidmat Centres have been left in a ruined state and despite their repeated attempts to convince the Bank to make their centres viable, the Bank has adopted an attitude which has jeopardized the careers of these professionals. The present chairman of the Bank had some different instincts when he was Executive President of the Bank because then he used to say something different and now he seems to have forgotten all what he has assured in the past.
“A certain lobby in JKB has time and again cheated us, they have ruined our dreams of becoming successful entrepreneurs and so with the passage of time we have been reduced to slaves”, they said.
They said that their repeated follow ups yielded no results and they have been compelled to come on roads and to go for an indefinite chain hunger strike across J&K and have decided not to celebrate Diwali.
Of the many issues raised by the Khidmat Centres the first and foremost demand is to convert the Khidmat Centres into Ultra Small Branches as they have been promised this thing in 2012 which the Bank is now trying to bypass for mysterious reasons. The second demand of these centres is to have a permanent settlement solution. Also the Khidmat Centres have demanded release of their GAP support (financial assistance) from the IT department requesting the Honourable Governor’s intervention. They said, their financial assistance (as per Govt. Order no. 46 ITD of 2011) has not been released since years for unknown reasons.
Referencing the Governor’s interview to Times Now and the recent job notifications by the Bank, they said that even the case of Khidmat Centres lies in a mismanaged and manipulated category (by different stake holders) where they don’t find any regard for the services rendered by their Khidmat Centres.