Govt should save BSNL not Reliance Jio, says employees union

Nearly 1.98 lakh BSNL and MTNL employees would breathe easy on Friday as their unpaid salaries were taken up for clearance by the telecom PSUs, department of telecom officials said.A day earlier, about Rs 500 crore was released by the government in the wake of a salary crisis.

The payment of salary for the month of February 2019 got affected after the BSNL management took a decision in January to pay salary to all staffers depending on the revenue receipts of a telecom circle. Deficits in revenue collections occurred in circles of north and west India, where BSNL is on a back foot after strong inroads made by Reliance Jio in mobile data services.

BSNL employees in Kerala, however, did not have to face the delay in their salary payment. Kerala is among the most profitable circle of BSNL and has witnessed an increase in operating profit this year, before calculating depreciation of assets in its books.

Earlier, the telecom PSU had announced that it would pay salaries for March onwards on a regular basis. “There will be no more problems about salary payment as BSNL's own revenues would start to flow in from March onwards. I was told by them that Rs 850 crore is the amount earmarked for salary payment, of which Rs 322 crore will be used to clear past dues,” said Manoj Sinha, Union telecom minister on Friday.

“After this, there will be no more employee dues," Sinha told reporters. In fact, if everything goes as planned with BSNL’s cash flow, employees are likely to receive their March salaries on time by March 30.

The minister said that pending dues of Rs 171 crore of MTNL was also released by the Department of Telecom. Both BSNL and MTNL work on various projects of department of telecommunications and have dues running to about Rs 6,000 crore for BSNL and Rs 500 crore for MTNL, according to Sanchar Nigam Executive Union (SNEU), BSNL officers union.

“There are deliberate attempts by the government to stall BSNL's progress. This is also achieved by blocking our payments by DoT,” said Aftab Ahmed Khan, president, SNEA. Khan explained that BSNL’s receivables due from DoT are: Rs 2,350 crore on BWA spectrum refund interest, Rs 2,100 crore on excess pension contribution paid to DoT by BSNL from employee salaries and other receivables from DoT.

"This in turn will benefit the private operators especially Reliance Jio to capture the entire telecom market," he adds. During a meeting of the All Unions and Associations of BSNL (AUAB) with the BSNL management last week, the unions were assured that salaries would be paid by March 20. To improve sentiments, unions have interacted with each other individually and also with the BSNL management, which they claim hastened the due payment process.

BSNL officials said that the company had already received its letter of support from the DoT, which will enable it to ask for funds from banks to the tune of Rs 3,500 crore to aid it with a rollout of 4G data services.

The Modi administration had been going slow with tackling troubles that have been brewing with the employees of the national telecom operators. BSNL and MTNL employees have been protesting for a year over allocation of 4G spectrum to BSNL, revision of their pensions and seeking refunds from DoT on excess contribution charged from BSNL on account of GPF contributions for over two years.

Sinha and others in the government including outgoing telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan had met representives of the All Employees Union of BSNL (AEUB) twice last year assuring them resolution of their demands.

After the last meeting in December 2018, unions were assured by Sinha that all their demands would be considered by the government, and stopped the unions from announcing a major strike.

But since his assurances, very little has come in terms of fulfilling those promises to BSNL employees. “We are now focusing our energy on convening a protest march on April 5, in which more than 10,000 employees of BSNL would march to Sanchar Bhavan and push for our pending demands. The excess payment of GPF contributions of employees alone stand at Rs 4,000 crore,” said Prahlad Rai, general secretary, AIBSNLEA.

At a time when all telecom companies are under heavy debts ranging from Rs 1 lakh crore to Rs 2 lakhs crore, BSNL’s net debt amounted to only Rs 13,000 crore. The telecom PSU is also assessed to have Rs 2 lakh crore of land and other assets.

Unions are now seeking government intervention comes to aid BSNL. Top management of Reliance Jio had earlier openly identified BSNL and not any other private telecom operator as their main competitor.

“When other private operators providing 4G services faced portability of numbers in millions, BSNL providing only 2G and 3G services did not have a single customers porting to Jio service. Government should rescue BSNL and not Reliance. They should allow us the letter of comfort essential to loan funds from the bank for network expansion and bettering other services and push for a revival package for BSNL,” said an office bearer of the left-backed BSNLEU, one of the largest unions of BSNL employees, without wanting to be named.

BSNL is an incipiently sick company (in net loss for 3 years) and seeks further equity infusion from the government. Earlier, an IIM-Ahmedabad study initiated by the government had proposed to revive the telecom PSU and termed it as essential to keep private telecom operators in check. Telecom users in India enjoy among the lowest data rates in the world while charges paid for spectrum by telcos in the country are among the highest.