BSNL employees to go on strike on July 11

NEW DELHI: Telecom services across the country could be affected on July 11 when over 3.4 lakh BSNL employees go on strike to press the government for immediately awarding the contract of creating 45.5 million GSM lines to the selected vendors.

"About 3.4 lakh BSNL employees and executives will go on a strike on July 11 demanding issue of purchase order for the 45.5 million GSM lines, for which tenders were finalised one year ago," the Joint Forum of BSNL and MTNL Unions said in a statement here.

Demonstrations will be held on July 9-10 and if the issue was not settled, the strike would be indefinite, it said.

In a separate statement, the Forum opposed government's reported proposal to reduce the original GSM tender by half, saying it would result in BSNL lagging in competition.

Quoting media reports, the Forum said private operators would take advantage with the new 3G technology grabbing the present and future subscribers.

Reducing the order by 50 per cent, as media reports suggested, would adversely affect BSNL's capacity to provide sufficient connections, it said. "Such a modification and reduction is not at all acceptable to staff unions", V A N Namboodiri, convener of the Joint Forum, said.

The Forum had earlier said BSNL could lose Rs 30,000 crore if the GSM tender was re-issued. In the last two months,BSNL has lost about Rs 110 crore revenue due to the delay, he had said.
   
Communications Minister A Raja has reportedly asked BSNL to renegotiate the tender price from 107 dollar a line to below 100 dollar, which the lowest bidder Ericsson is believed to have opposed.