Once a cradle of banking, Canara coast now lacks people to work

Udupi, Jan 28, 2021: It is common for roads, drains, and political issues to steal the limelight at the Panchayat and Municipal meetings. Udupi Zilla Panchayat on Thursday took up an important issue that has been bothering the people of villagers in the region.

Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts are known as the cradle of Banking. People are actively involved in banking activity here. Almost every person in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi district is well connected with banks. While the people in cities opt for online banking, the villagers continue to visit banks for their transactions. With the central government coming up with various financial supports through the banks to the rural people, people go to banks not only for the financial transactions but also to know about these projects.

But one of the difficulties in the villages in the absence of staff who can speak in the local languages. In many places the branch has staff from other states. Though they provide good service, people find it difficult to communicate with them.

In villages, apart from the usual financial transactions, people go to the banks for information related to some program or something related to banking. But the staff there who hails from other state finds it difficult to explain or even if he explains the villagers will find it difficult to understand.

This issue came up at the Zilla Panchayat meeting in Udupi today.

The members stressed appointing at least a few staff in a bank from Karnataka.
“It will be easy to get the services if there are at least two staff from Karnataka.

Otherwise, due to language problems people will not be in a position to get details about the various projects,” member Babu Shetty said.

Lead Bank Manager Rudresh told the meeting that people from the state are not showing much interest in banking jobs. As a result, most of the employees are from Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh.