After shooting off a letter over alleged high handedness, SEBI officials on September 5 held a protest at the securities market regulator’s Mumbai headquarters. They also raised calls for resignation of Chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch.
They were protesting against a press release by SEBI calling their letter on unprofessional work culture sent to Finance Ministry as “misguided by external elements”. According to reports the agitation lasted for couple of hours.
In its rebuttal, SEBI claimed that the letters by its disgruntled employees were “part of a strategy to change the narrative to frame the issue as relating to the work environment, with an objective to have bargaining power to seek more benefits”.
Rubbishing claims that its employees were underpaid, the SEBI reply says that the entry-level salary for its Grade A officers is Rs 34 lakh per annum and the new demands placed by employees would amount to an additional CTC of almost Rs 6 lakh per annum.
SEBI emphasised that several initiatives have been taken by it over the last 2-3 years to ensure its employees were technologically updated and the claims of an unprofessional work culture stemmed from various instances such as under-pitching of processing capabilities of officers, mis-reporting of KRA achievements, shuttling of files between departments to avoid taking decisions and ‘adjusting’ appraisal marks of poorly performing officers to ‘somehow’ make them eligible for promotion.
Employee allegations
The SEBI statement is triggered by a letter written by a section of its employees to the Finance Ministry on Aug 6 which levelled several serious charges against the SEBI hierarchy. Without naming SEBI Chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch, the letter said the SEBI office had become a “furnace of unrealistic KRA point achievement.”
Business Today has gained access to this document which cited “unrealistic KRA targets” as one of the two root causes of discontent, claiming the “KRA targets for this year were increased anywhere around 30%-50% for some departments and divisions.” The employees claimed that the “unrealistic” targets have not only hurt the quality of work but also created stress and anxiety leading to “panic addition” instead of “value addition”.
The other root cause, according to the letter written to the Finance Ministry was the “mistrust and lack of respect shown at the highest level towards employees”. Employees claimed that “over the last two-three years fear has become the primary driving force in SEBI”. The letter says that shouting, scolding and public humiliation were the norm in meetings.