The proposal of the BSNL management to outsource the 70,000 and odd towers and the 6.25 lakh route km of optical fibre in the name of adding revenue and to bring down cost to the company is based on wrong and false premises and is not acceptable.
The proposal as reported in the press is that BSNL will entrust private players to manage, operate and maintain the above infrastructure viz. towers and optical fibre, across the country. The private partners will be allowed to rent out capacity to other players. The CMD is reported to have stated that this is one of the new revenue streams for BSNL going forward.
I am surprised that such a big and important decision with regard to the policy of the company has not been discussed with the recognised union or the JAC, which are wholeheartedly working to improve the service and enhance the financial viability of the company. Earlier such arbitrary decisions of the BSNL management to cancel the GSM tenders, recommend VRS and disinvestment etc. have been opposed by the workers and the management was compelled to retract from the wrong direction. A management which wants the support of the workers should have the courtsey to discuss such issues with the recognised union and the representatives of the workers like JAC. This is much more important when the workers themselves are on a programme of action to improve the services through the ‘Customer Delight Year 2011-12’.
These thousands of towers and lakhs of routes km of optical cables have been purchased and installed / laid with years of continuous hard work and spending thousands of crore of Rupees. Leasing over all these infrastructure to private players for getting some meagre revenue is not a favourable plan for BSNL. The private players will grab the maximum profits and only a very small portion will be for the company, of course with one slot.
And the experience of the government has been that once property or infrastructure is leased, in 99% cases, it is a permanent leasing and the owner will not be able to get it back at all. For getting some temporary relief, that too at the mercy of a private player. is a trap from which the company will never be able to escape. Instead of leasing, it is the responsiblity of the company to utilise all these infrastructures by managing, operating and maintaining the same by the company itself.
When the company has sufficient staff, both executives and Non-Executives, instead of retrenching them through VRS they should be utilised for these purposes and drop the proposals of leasing them out.
The Unions should strongly protest and defeat the present proposal which will only benefit the private companies.
Protest the outsourcing of BSNL Towers and Optical fibre cables
04 Tuesday Oct 2011
Posted in Uncategorized
VAN Namboodiri's Blog 
Recently, I got a chance to interact with a BSNL trade union leader at Capital of Kerala. While sharing his experiences, he was thanking his trade union for his visit to various parts of India citing annual BSNL conference. When I asked him more questions, I was shocked. Corruption is mounting in BSNL through trade unions. None is talking about this inner corruption!
I have gone through your comments and thank for the same. I do not know which BSNL Union leader discussed with you. Any way that is not the important thing. But the fact is that the service trade unions are comparatively free from corruption because of the usual democratic proceess and transparency. However, there may be some persons also who do corrupt practices. such persons will not be able to continue for long in the organisation. As far as BSNLEU is concerned it has the tradition of holding the Branch general body meetings, District Conferences, Circle Conferences and All India Conferences as per schedule and all the accounts are audited and discussed in the meetings. So far no compalints have been recevied by us in these matters. Any compalint of corruption, if received will be seriously taken note of and action taken.
Regarding the media, it has its own method of propaganda. It is the case world over. The fact is that more than 95% of the media in the world are controlled by the corporates and big business and their view will be focussed more and more. Even many reports given by their best talented reporters will not see light,if they are against the policy of that paper. For example even a small procession of religious or of those of political parties in power will be given much publicity in Delhi. But even 10 lakh workers procession protesting against the wrong policies of the government in Delhi will not get even a five line, one column report in the Delhi papers. Hence it is necessary that the progressive sections and workers will have to establish papers and other medias to propagate their point of view.