the goan I network
PANAJI
In what is one of the largest retirement drives in India, around 78,300 employees of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) have opted for “voluntary retirement scheme” (VRS) and they will stop working with effect from February 1.
In Goa, 363 BSNL employees took VRS and saw January 31 as their last working day. Mass VRS has been introduced to make BSNL financially viable, which is staring at a financial crisis for a long-time now.
Senior officials at BSNL’s office in Patto, Panaji maintained that customers should not worry, as they have outsourced all functions, which retiring employees used to take care.
S B Joshi, deputy general manager, BSNL-Goa, said, “Of the 525 overall employees in Goa, 363 have opted for VRS. The outgoing employees used to take care of field work like outdoor cables, OFC cables, broadband programming and etc.
He continued, “These functions form part of phone-mechanics team. We have now outsourced such tasks and therefore customers won’t be affected.”
The VRS scheme was meant for all the employees, who are of age 50 years and above. As 363 such employees have already left BSNL in Goa, only
162 will remain.
BSNL has 12 CSC (customer sales centres) in Goa, which will continue to work like earlier. The only difference is that they will be mostly managed by vendors’ team. However, Joshi confirmed that there will be at least one employee of BSNL at all these CSCs, who will be called a commercial officer.
From February 1 onwards, BSNL will only have 162 employees in the State of its own, while a lot of tasks will be outsourced to vendors.
Sources further revealed that the average salary of an outgoing BSNL employee was in the range of Rs 80,000 to 1 lakh per month, which was a huge drain on its resources. As significant number of such work-force has opted for VRS, BSNL will save a lot of money, which is likely to make it financially healthy.
