Oriental Bank of Commerce, which had earlier engaged National Institute for Bank Management for conducting a study on the disparity of pay package of OBC and GTB employees, is all set to slash salaries of erstwhile GTB employees and bring them at par with their counterpart at OBC.
"OBC has decided to provide protection to GTB employees for the next three years after which their position would be re-examined," said B D Narang, chairman and managing director, OBC.
"The report, submitted by NIBM, would be presented before the board and adopted thereafter," he added.
"There exists a large disparity between pay package among GTB employees and also in comparison with OBC employees. This would be equalised in accordance with the report submitted because a public sector bank cannot have pay-disparity for employees of same cadre which needs to be corrected," said Narang.
"There are instances where employees at GTB of same cadre has been getting more than their contemporary of same position which would also be corrected," he added.
"We will not ask any GTB employee to leave, but they are free to leave if they like. As many as 367 employees of GTB have already left after the merger. At present, there are 1,000 employees of GTB who were absorbed at OBC with the merger," he added.
The bank in its prospectus for the second public offering has also mentioned that the realignment of salaries would be made by 2005, which may result in a number of GTB employees leave.
Meanwhile, OBC hopes to cover the entire deficit on account of merger of GTB in the next 12-18 months. Addressing a press conference to announce its second public offer, Narang said, "We are expecting 30 per cent recovery this year and income on account of deficit would be put in one account."
