Service technicians of franchisees at wits’ end with many staff opting for VRS

Several customer care centres of BSNL have become a casualty of mass retirement of staff under VRS a few days ago, but senior officers of the telecom behemoth did not concede that they were shut down though the centres were visibly closed.

A senior officer of BSNL told The Hindu that about 40 non-remunerative centres were working with reduced staff and limited hours in Hyderabad. There may have been curtailment in shifts of duties of staff resulting in closure of the premises for some hours.

Outsourcing

He said the footfalls at major customer care centres and even the revenue against previous month’s average were normal. As many as 2,800 BSNL employees took retirement under VRS in Hyderabad. The effort was to employ staff on outsourcing basis to put the services back on rails, but it was likely that this will take two to three months.

The BSNL has appointed franchises at some places to execute the services handled by retired staff but they were found wanting in expertise related to landlines. They merely dealt with bill collections and issue of SIMs. Since the BSNL had underground cable network whose links with the telephone exchanges were only in the knowledge of linemen, the franchisees were all at bay in attending to calls of repairs. The territorial jurisdiction of linemen left in service was being widened to attend to repairs.

In Siddipet, for instance, not a single lineman was left on rolls as all of them had opted for VRS. The maintenance of lines had become a major challenge in the town.

A visit to BSNL establishments elsewhere in Hyderabad showed skeletal staff struggling to attend to call of duty. At the Central Telegraph Office at Abids where BSNL bill payments were accepted from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. till the staff were in full strength, the working hours were limited to 9 a.m. to 3.30 p.m. But, the swiping machines for payment by bank debit cards either here or at Gowliguda telephone exchange did not work.

A BSNL employees union leader G. Sambasiva Rao said a large number of staff working on Based Transmission Systems (BSNL towers) and optical fibre cables also took retirement which will hamper working of mobile phones.