It is learnt that after nearly a year of repeated representations and petitions by various bank employee unions, five-day working week is reportedly closer to becoming a reality. With more than 80% of banking transactions including opening of accounts being done digitally, the banking sector is of the view that the need for six-day banking isn’t very compelling. At present bank branches function on the first, third and fifth Saturday of a month. The second and fourth Saturdays are holidays. However until 2015 banks were operational for six days a week, including all Saturdays of a month. When the customer updates the passbook, all these digital transactions, no matter how small, will appear on the bank passbook. Hence the passbook gets filled with entries in no time and the customer has to apply for a new passbook. As a result of this the customer could end up with several passbooks. It would hence be in the fitness of things for the bank passbook issued to the common man to have more pages or an alternative arrangement made to address this issue.
