BSNL has not paid to salary to its employees for the month of May, according to media reports.
This is despite significant reduction in the monthly expenditure of salary, says P Abhimanyu, general secretary of BSNL employees’ union.

BSNL’s monthly expenditure of salary has come down to Rs 350 crore from about Rs 950 crore earlier, Financial Express reported.

79,000 people have left the state-run telecom operator by utilizing the voluntary retirement scheme (VRS). BSNL has 70,000 employees at present.

“The contract workers in BSNL have not been paid wages for the past one year, as a result of which 12 contract workers have already committed suicide. The BSNL management has violated the instructions issued by the labour and finance ministries regarding payment of wages of the contract workers during the lockdown period,” Abhimanyu said.

Recently, India government has put on hold the tender floated by BSNL to procure 4G network equipment, based on the complaint given by the Telecom Equipment and Services Promotion Council (TEPC).

TEPC has complained that BSNL has flouted the Make-in-India norms while issuing the tender.

BSNL should not be compelled to procure equipment from domestic vendors when all the private operators are procuring 4G equipment from international vendors,” the union said in a letter. Indian vendors do not have proven 4G technology and they do not have the experience of managing large networks.