Govt chalks out revival plan to rescue BSNL, MTNL

Days after the association comprising engineers and telecom officers at BSNL urged PM Modi to monetise its assets, the government on Tuesday convened a meeting to chalk out a revival plan for the state-owned firm, including MTNL.

The All India Graduate Engineers and Telecom Officers Association (AIGETOA) on June 18 wrote a letter to PM Modi and urged him to provide budgetary support to BSNL. It also asked PM Modi to allocate spectrum for 4G services so that they can compete in the market.

On June 25, Cabinet Secretary PK Sinha convened an hour-long meeting with the Department of Telecommunication (DoT), including secretary Aruna Sundararajan, to prepare a blueprint for the revival plans of cash-crunched telecoms. Surprisingly, both MTNL and BSNL's top bosses were not present in the meeting, as mentioned in Financial Express.

The government is exploring plenty of options to provide long-term stability to telecos for their revival. The revival plan may include measures like salary cuts, and accountability of staff, in which employees have to either perform or perish.  In addition to  this, staff-cost is also in the list.

Currently, over 60 per cent of BSNL's revenues go into paying salaries to its staff and 90 per cent of MTNL's revenues are used to pay salaries of staff.

Lately, both these companies have  failed to pay the February salaries to nearly two lakh employees.

Both MTNL and BSNL have been reporting losses since the time they were asked to pay spectrum price in 2010 for all the circles where they operate.  At present, MTNL operates in Delhi and Mumbai and BSNL in rest of the 20 telecom circles.

(Edited by: Mansi Jaswal)

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