A section of employees at West Bengal's Salboni currency printing press have decided to not work beyond nine hours shift citing health issues, a move that is likely to impact the printing of currency notes.
According to a report in Hindustan Times, as a result of the 12-hour shifts, the press was printing 46 million currency notes per day but with the employees deciding against putting extra hours, the number of notes printed daily will go down by 6 million.
After working for 12-hour shifts for the past fortnight to put more cash into circulation, some of the employees began complaining of lower back pain, disturbed sleep and overall physical and mental stress.
“We entered an agreement with the management on December 14 for working on 12-hour shifts for two weeks. The agreement ended on December 27 and we have refused to continue with it,” a member of Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Private Limited (BRBNMPL) Employees’ Association told HT on condition of anonymity.
The Salboni unit can print all currency notes including the new Rs2,000 and Rs500 notes.
The Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Private Limited (BRBNMPL) Employees' Association have served a notice to the authorities that several of their members have taken ill due to continuous overtime shifts since December 14.
Trinamool Congress MP and president of the Association Sisir Adhikari said, "Several employees have taken ill at the currency presses in Mysore and Salboni. Since December 14, all employees were forced by the authorities to do 12-hour shifts so that round-the-clock printing of notes could be done to meet the sudden huge demand of notes specially of Rs 500 and Rs 100 denominations."
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