Demotion concerns employees
The state-owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) is to assess its employees for competence with the first examination scheduled to be administered this month.
The assessment that is to be conducted on the employees of the bank ranging from district managers to makers and checkers of the bank which are referred to Customers Account and Transactions System (CATS) process jobs.
The inter-departmental letter sent to all district managers and human resource departments on April 22 states that the exam will be administered to all of the stated employees on May 24. The letter also indicated that the first time assessment will be conducted on a pilot basis.
Hence, this examination has no consequence on the employees of the bank in any terms, according to Belihu Bekele, acting communications head of CBE.
“The employees have been notified of the assessment and they are given materials to prepare for the assessment,” said Belihu.
However, the exam is not to be administered to all of the employees on the same day and it might even be extended as the exam questions are yet being prepared, according to Belihu.
The employees of the bank have expressed their concern regarding the effects of the examination. Some fear that the benefits like fuel allowance that the bank’s employees get will be revoked.
The effects of the examination/assessment is only discussed in terms of the demotion or the revocation of the different benefits that the employees used to get rather that additional benefits or promotion they could get if they perform well in the examination.
Even though there are frustrations among the employees, the assessment will be based on the banking procedures that the employees used to use in their day-to-day activities like transaction processing. This process is called Customers Account and Transactions System (CATS).
Although the employees used to use this procedure in their day today activities, most of the sections are not known to all of the employees as there are different procedures used by some sections and not others.
CBE currently has 33,000 employees all over the country in its 1,186 branches which makes it the largest employer of the financial sector in the country.
The bank is the largest bank in the country with a total asset of 438.6 billion birr. The bank also reported that it mobilized a total deposit of 58.6 billion birr and a gross profit of 11.2 billion birr in the third quarter of the fiscal year 2016/17.
The bank’s customers have also grown to 15 million among which 3.5 million use are card users. The bank also has 1,335 automated teller machines (ATM) and 6,696 point of sale (POS) machines installed.
The officials of the bank failed to comment on the consequences of the assessment in terms of demotion and promotion of the employees.
