Now it is common public knowledge that the state-led telecom operator, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has been caught in a stifling position financially since the last two years which has gone only worse in the last half of it. However, now in a new statement made by a BSNL official and reported by ET Telecom, the official has said some striking things. The BSNL official quoted, said that the board of the company should be on the task of motivating and encouraging the staff of the company instead of issuing decrees for salary cuts. He also added that currently, the workforce of the telco is doing all in its hands and is putting efforts to manage the networks, run services, and maintaining the SIM sale targets.
Principal General Manager of Haryana Circle Takes a Stance
In a letter inked by the Principal General Manager of Haryana circle, the official stated: “It is very clear that BSNL is passing through a severe financial crunch, but still, teams in the service area are trying their level best to manage the network, run services somehow and maintain SIM sale rate.” He further added to his line saying, “It is requested not to threaten the SSA team but encourage and motivate in such a critical situation.” This two-page letter from the GM of the Haryana circle came after the corporate HR of BSNL called for an explanation of the poor performance of SIM card sales where the Faridabad region was the worst performer.
The officials also pointed out that in the rural areas, BSNL network is taking a hit as the vendors have stopped supplying fuel for backup as there are a lot of pending dues which BSNL owes to them. This lack of fuel for backup is resulting in massive outages, thus hurting SIM sale numbers, retention of the customers on the BSNL network and revenue too.
40 Out of 44 Tower Sites in Faridabad Running Without Backup
The situation in the region is so terrible that out of the 44 sites owned by Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL), 40 do not have any kind of battery backup. On top of that, Faridabad already has inadequate grid supply. As per the official due to the poor network, the subscribers who visit Faridabad even for things like healthcare face service issues and immediately port their SIM to some other network.
BSNL has been facing a severe financial crunch for months now, and the primary reason has been the lack of a proper 4G network. This has also led to the delay in salaries of 1.63 lakh strong workforce of the telecom operator. BSNL is currently exploring options like the VRS and land monetisation to help its financials. The telco also has unpaid 80,000 contract workers and has a very high wage to revenue ratio as a result of which it spends around Rs 9,500 crore every year only in salaries. It also owes a lot to vendors like Nokia Networks who have threatened service disruption in case of non-payment
