A bank operating in the heart of Durgapur town over the months has been running without an administrator or manager. Instead, it has been run by an amateur weightlifter.

Aiming to lend financial independence to the women, a key prerequisite of a progressive and equitable society in and around the industrial town, the operation of Durgapur Mahila Cooperative Bank was started in 1998. The employees of the bank, except a peon, are women and 90 per cent of the depositors are women too.

The bank’s board was dissolved in 2017 and an administrator was appointed. The administrator too has left the bank after her tenure ended.

The bank currently has 6,500 odd account holders and secured a Rs 12.5 crore deposit in 26 years. It has extended loan support worth Rs 5.5 cr to the local women, who are the beneficiaries of bank’s dividend against annual business. It provides loans to women for pottery, poultry, nursery, sewing machines – mostly to meet the requirements of the feminine gender. “We also have started providing loans for two-wheeler, four-wheelers, besides term loans and consumer loans,” said Rupa Banerjee, the accountant who’s now the highest designated employee of the DMCB. She’s a weightlifter by passion but her workload at her professional arena, as she described: “Seems like a heavier weight these days after the entire office responsibility is tasked upon my shoulder, which I cannot shrug off.”

The bank has just six staff, including Rupa. Nivedita Das works as the assistant manager of the bank but she couldn’t be promoted as the manager and Rupa, a junior to her too couldn’t be assigned as the manager superseding Nivedita due to technical reasons. So, she’s termed as the HDE to conduct the functioning of the bank. The office assistants, Manisha Nayek, Mahua Ganguly also agreed to the decision by the bank’s administrator Dr Bratati Banerjee.

Dr Banerjee, the administrator too, vacated the office last February and it’s now Rupa alone to act as the chief navigator Rupa explained, “Our pay revision is pending since August 2020 but type and volume of work has increased. Our expansion plans are shelved at a time when we are consistently missing the opportunities of a stupendous increase in business.”

The bank’s desperately eyeing the proposed election on 1 December to help formation of a new board. “We had been seeking a board for a long time and a number of communications has been forwarded to the registrar of the cooperative office,” said Nivedita.