New Delhi6 hours ago
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The Telecom Department is planning to implement the second Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) in the government telecom company Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited i.e. BSNL. For this the department is going to take approval from the Finance Ministry.
The Telecom Department wants to reduce the number of employees by 35% through VRS and also wants to improve the financial condition of the company. Economics Times (ET) has given this information in one of its reports. However, no such information has been given officially by the company or the government.
BSNL demands ₹15,000 crore from Finance Ministry for VRS
BSNL has sought Rs 15,000 crore from the Finance Ministry to cover the cost of the VRS initiative. ET quoted an official with knowledge of the matter as saying that through VRS, the company’s board has proposed to reduce the number of its employees by 18,000 to 19,000.
Will take cabinet approval after Finance Ministry
According to the report, BSNL currently allocates ₹7,500 crore or about 38% of the company’s revenue to pay salaries to its employees. The company is planning to reduce this expenditure to Rs 5,000 crore annually. After getting approval from the Finance Ministry, the Telecom Department will take the approval of the Cabinet.
BSNL’s revenue in FY 2024 was Rs 21,302 crore, which is a slight improvement compared to the previous year. The company’s workforce includes more than 30,000 non-executive employees and 25,000 executives.
VRS was first offered in 2019
Earlier, BSNL had offered VRS for the first time in 2019. The scheme was launched on 4 November 2019 and remained open till 31 December 2019. According to media reports, at that time BSNL had about 1.5 lakh employees, out of which about 78,569 employees accepted VRS.
BSNL is facing debt crisis
Public sector telecom company BSNL has been struggling with debt crisis for some time. The Government of India has so far supported the company through three revival packages. In the first revival package in the year 2019, Rs 69,000 crore was approved, which brought stability to BSNL and MTNL.
At the same time, in the year 2022, a second revival package of ₹ 1.64 lakh crore was approved. Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnav had said at that time that this package would help in upgrading BSNL to 4G. After this, in the third revival package, the government had approved a package of Rs 89,047 crore for BSNL. This package included starting 4G and 5G services, strengthening the balance sheet and expansion of fiber network.
BSNL could not start 4G service even after 10 years of 4G launch
In India, Reliance Jio, Airtel and other telecom companies have started 5G services. Whereas BSNL has not been able to start 4G service yet. 4G was launched in India in 2014. Even after 10 years, BSNL has still not been able to start 4G service.
