Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has called upon banks to appoint staff who could “speak the local language” and thus urged them to show inclusivity in their recruitment.
Accrding to The Hindu report, Sitharaman was speaking at the 75th Annual General Meeting of Indian Banks’ Association in Mumbai on Friday.
“You are there for doing business. You are not there to cultivate certain value system into the citizens,” said the Union Minister.
Highlighting the diversity of our country, Sitharaman said, “When you have staff at the branch level who do not talk in the regional language and who are patriotic enough to say “hey, you don’t talk Hindi, maybe you are not Indian” … I think, this doesn’t do any good for business,” Sitharaman said.
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Further the minister also asked banks to review the people posted at branches and make sure that those who cannot speak the local language “should not be assigned to roles dealing with customers.”
“You must have a lot more sensible ways of recruiting people”, she asserted further.
Apart from this, she also exhorted the banking sector to play a lead role in realising the dream of a developed India by 2047.
“We have so much and more to do, the banking industry needs to serve the Amrit Kaal, we have to see how best we can lift ourselves to meet the aspirations of a growing India. The Prime Minister has said that we need to be the developed country we deserve to be, by 2047. It is the banking sector which has to make a big contribution towards this,” the minister said.
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