courtesy: cnbctv 18
courtesy: thehindubusinessline
courtesy: hindustantimes
BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) and MTNL ( Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited) want their ex-employees back. The telecom operators have sought for the Department of Telecommunications (DoT’s) permission to rehire their employees who left the telco under the Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS).
In accordance to a report, the state-runned telcos want their employees to resume in the capacity of consultants.
Due to operational losses, the BSNL and MTNL telco faced employee shortage issue. Approximately 93,000 employees from both the company left under voluntary retirement in the previous year. Several field and attached officers had approached the telecom department to seek the permission for whether the employees who left under VRS could be hired again as consultants.
The DoT had asked the officials to hold the move and not yet to hire any employee back. The matter would be extensively discussed in the DoT Headquarters and the proper guidelines would later be released whenever the decision has been placed.
The Central government had also announced the VRS back in 2019 in order to cut down the wage expenses of BSNL and MTNL. According to the scheme, the expenses of BSNL were to cut down by 50 per cent and of MTNL by 75 per cent.
More than the 50 per cent of employees at BSNL had opted to retire voluntarily, whereas 80 percent of employees from MTNL chose to retire voluntarily.
If a BSNL or MTNL employee chose to leave the company under VRS, then the person would get 35 days of salary for each year of service already been completed and also 25 days of salary for each year the person had left until their retirement.
The amount of salary to be paid to the employees were to be in two instalments. The first of the total amount was to be given in the FY 2020-2021 and the second one in FY 2021-2022, but the second instalment had been delayed due to the COVID-19 slowdown that the telco had to incur.