BSNL Engineers indefinite hunger fast enters third day
State run PSU Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) has once again hit a roadblock when Young engineers and Account officers recruited by BSNL after formation of PSU from Department of Telecom (DoT) in 2000. Graduate engineers and Account officers of state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) are sitting on Jantar-Mantar, New Delhi from 12th February 2014 against the breach of trust and non-resolution of various basic issues in respect of direct recruited executives of BSNL. BSNL’s Graduate Engineers & Account Officers association (AIGETOA) launched acountrywide protest in the month of Aug-2013 to resolve the long pending demands specially related to “ghost of Fitment” introduced in 2nd Pay Revision Committee (PRC) and .
Five BSNL Engineers along with supporters are on hunger strike pressing for various demands for young engineers entered the third day on Friday. AIGETOA President RP Sahu has said that he will not break his fast till the all the demands for these young Engineers are not resolved. After a long protest of more than 20 days including mass Dharna for 12 days at Jantar -Mantar New Delhi, this association called off the protest when management agreed in writing to resolve the issues as per DPE/DoT/GoI guidelines in a time bound manner within a time frame of 2 to 3 months. As BSNL management fail to bring any solution for long pending demands, BSNL engineers finally decided to go Gandhian way of fast.
State owned telecom operator BSNL has reported a loss of Rs 7,884 crore for the financial year 2012-13 (FY-13). This was BSNL’s fourth straight loss making fiscal, although the losses have improved 10.93% from Rs 8,851 crore loss in the previous fiscal FY-12. The telco had last reported a profit in the fiscal FY-09, where it had reported a profit of Rs 575 crore. In subsequent years, it has reported losses of Rs 1,823 crore in FY-10 and Rs 6,384 crore in FY-11.
