Memorandum to the  Communications Minister

In the general elections, UPA was  defeated and the NDA government was formed with Shri Narendra Modi as Prime Minister. Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad is the new Communications & IT Minister. Immediately on taking over charge, he stated that revival of BSNL and MTNL is his priority. He criticized the earlier government for not attending to the requirement of these two PSUs.

In these circumstances, the Forum in its meeting on 22-05-2014 took the decision to submit a Memorandum to the Communications Minister.

The Memorandum dated 26-05-2014 with the following demands was submitted to the Communications Minister .

  1. Honouring of Assurances given to BSNL at the time of Corporatisation
  2. Providing Financial Assistance to BSNL
  3. Refund of Spectrum charges paid by BSNL to government
  4. Formation of new / subsidiary companies disintegrating BSNL to be stopped.
  5. Filling up of directors of BSNL Board
  6. Pension Contribution on the basis of actual pay instead of the maximum of the payscale.
  7. BSNL/MTNL Services to be made mandatory for Central/State/PSU establishments
  8. Absorption of ITS officers
  9. 78.2% IDA Merger for BSNL Pensioners

The Memorandum was signed by Comrades V.A.N.Namboodiri, Convener, Forum, Suresh Kumar (BSNLMS), Islam Ahamed(NFTE), Prahlad Rai(AIBSNLEA), R.P.Sharma(BSNLOA), Sunil Gautam(SNATTA), R.K.Ram(BTU), Gajendra Kumar(BTEU), R.K.Kohli (NFTBE), P.Abhimanyu(BSNLEU) Jayaprakash (FNTO) and K.Sebastin (SNEA(I).

Passive Infrastructure Agreement between BSNL and Reliance

When it came to the notice of the Forum that an agreement has been made between BSNL and Reliance for passive infrastructure of the BSNL towers, it held a meeting immediately on 18-07-2014 and discussed the issue. The Forum decided to demand the management to immediately provide it with all details of the agreement, after which the Forum will discuss again.

M/s Deloitte Committee Recommendations opposed

In the meanwhile  M/s Deloittee Consultants, which was engaged by the BSNL Management gave its recommendations with regard to the financial viability and revival of BSNL. There was no discussion or consultation with the unions/associations. The recommendations including VRS, combing SSAs, reducing the sanction of staff etc. were completely against the interest of BSNL as well as its workers. The meeting of the Forum held on 04-08-2014 strongly opposed the recommendations and decided to organize agitational programmes for rejecting the same.

  1. Protest demonstrations on 12th August 2014 at Corporate office/Circle/SSAs.
  2. A Press statement to be issued against the retrograde recommendations of Deloitte Consultants
  3. Meet the Communications Minister on this issue.

The demonstrations in Delhi was held on 21st August  2014 so as to adjust with the meeting of the Heads of BSNL Circles at that day at Corporate Office. All the programmes were successfully organized. But however, no meeting with the minister could be arranged. (To be continued)