The Telecom Department is planning to implement the second Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) in the government telecom company Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL). For this, the department is going to take approval from the Finance Ministry. The Telecom Department wants to reduce the number of employees by 35% through VRS and also wants to improve the financial condition of the company. Economics Times (ET) has given this information in one of its reports. However, no such information has been officially given by the company or the government. BSNL demanded ? 15,000 crores from the Finance Ministry for VRS. BSNL has demanded Rs 15,000 crores from the Finance Ministry to cover the cost of the VRS initiative. ET quoted an official aware of the matter as saying that through VRS, the company’s board has proposed to reduce the number of its employees by 18,000 to 19,000. After the Finance Ministry, it will take the Cabinet’s approval. According to the report, currently BSNL allocates ? 7,500 crore or about 38% of the company’s revenue to pay salaries to its employees. The company plans to reduce this expenditure to Rs 5,000 crore annually. After getting approval from the Finance Ministry, the Telecom Department will take the Cabinet’s approval. BSNL’s revenue in FY 2024 was Rs 21,302 crore, which is a slight improvement over the previous year. The company’s workforce includes more than 30,000 non-executive employees and 25,000 executives. VRS was offered for the first time in 2019 Earlier, BSNL had offered VRS for the first time in 2019. The scheme started on 4 November 2019 and remained open till 31 December 2019. According to media reports, at that time BSNL had about 1.5 lakh employees, out of which about 78,569 employees accepted VRS. BSNL is facing debt crisis Public sector telecom company BSNL has been facing debt crisis for some time now. The Government of India has supported the company through three revival packages so far. In the first revival package in the year 2019, Rs 69,000 crore was approved, which brought stability to BSNL and MTNL. At the same time, in the year 2022, the second revival package of ? 1.64 lakh crore was approved. Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnav had said at that time that this package would help BSNL upgrade to 4G. After this, in the third revival package, the government approved a package of Rs 89,047 crore for BSNL. This package included starting 4G and 5G services, strengthening the balance sheet and expansion of the fiber network. Even after 10 years of the launch of 4G, BSNL has not been able to start 4G service. Reliance Jio, Airtel and other telecom companies have started 5G service in India. On the other hand, BSNL has not been able to start 4G service till now. 4G was started in India in 2014. Even after 10 years, BSNL has not been able to start 4G service till now.
