Banks to remain closed for five days during Christmas, read why?

New Delhi : Amid upcoming two bank strikes scheduled in the coming week, it is expected that the national banks may remain shut for nothing less than five days.

Banking services may get severely affected during Christmas as members of Indian Bank's Association (IBA) have proposed a two-day strike to protest the merger of public sector banks. According to reports an all-India bank strike on December 26 and a bank officers' union, too has separately called for another strike on December 21.

As per this, no bank related work can be scheduled after December 20 till December 26 with Christmas holidays and weekend falling in  between the days.

The All India Bank Officers Confederation (AIBOC) said that the strike call on December 21 has been called against the Indian Banks' Associations move to leave officers in scale IV and above out of the bipartite wage settlement ambit. If these bank strikes happen, December 21 being Friday will hamper banking services, mainly offline banking, therefore on December 22 (fourth Saturday), December 23 (Sunday), December 25 (Christmas – a prescribed bank holiday), there will be no work in banks. The strikes on December 21 and 26 would disturb services drastically in these days, barring December 24 (Monday).

As per announcement, the ATM services will remain unaffected on December 21, while it may see a hit on December 26.