Uco Bank Not For Decentralisation
Uco Bank is in favour of scrapping the decision to decentralise its operation under five local head offices (LHOs). Instead of fragmenting the head office, the bank management is in favour of strengthening it.
The decision will be formalised this month, following the approval of the board at its forthcoming meeting, likely to be on May 12.
The decision to form LHOs was taken less than a year ago by Uco under the chairmanship of Sharda Singh. Singh was in favour of the decentralisation route to quicken decision making and bring back the bank nearer to its customers. Besides the State Bank of India, the country's largest commercial bank, no other bank in India is currently run by LHOs.
The bank's plan includes doing away with one tier, which was part of the bank's revival plan. Of the current four tiers, namely, head office, zonal office, regional managers office and branches, zonal managers office will no longer exist.
Regional managers will now be directly under head office. There are 14 zonal offices, 40 regional managers offices. The post of general managers is likely to become redundant. Each regional manager will look after 45 branches.
Regional managers, who are placed on grade four in the officers' scale of pay, will look after businesses worth Rs 300 crore, scale five regional managers or assistant general managers will monitor businesses above Rs 300 crore and up to Rs 600 crore. Businesses worth between Rs 600 crore to Rs 1,000 crore will be headed by deputy general managers, while that above Rs 1,000 crore will be under general managers. The proposed move was outlined in a meeting with the regional managers recently.
The LHOs, which were to be vested with significant powers, were supposed to be located at Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta, Chennai and Lucknow.
Except investments, all activities such as credit, vigilance, inspection general administration, premises will be transferred from the headquarters to these LHOs, each of which were supposed to be headed by a general manager.