Bank employees punished for overlooking prayer

Courtesy : KalingaTimes
Kendrapara, March 22: At a time when Gandhian ideology and preaching is on steady decline, a local urban cooperative bank here has set a precedent of sort by punishing its employees. The erring employees forgot to sing popular Gandhian prayer!
The whole of the staff including the branch manager in a local branch of Kendrapara urban cooperative bank in the town were served show-cause notices. Their offence- they broke the rule and overlooked to sing Gandhian prayer before the daily work.
“A day's salary of all staff in the old bus stand branch has been held up. All are asked to explain the circumstances leading to the skipping of the prayer”, said Sushil Kumar Samal, secretary of the cooperative bank.
To inculcate discipline, we have framed a rule by which all the staffs are duty bound to sing “Vaishnav jan to tene kahiye je peed paraayi jaa ne re (one who is a vaishnav knows the pain of others). Before the daily banking function commences, it has been made mandatory to chant the prayer which Bapu loved it the most, he said.
But for some strange reason, the staffs did not pray recently before the commencement of work. After the lapse was detected, disciplinary action was initiated, said the official.
The introduction of ‘vaishnav jan….' prayer in our bank is a tribute to Bapu. In no other banking organizations from this region, Gandhiji is remembered everyday in such an austere manner, Samal claimed.