The employees of BSNL are opposing the proposal of merging it with MTNL as they feel doing so will further ruin the financial condition of the state-run firm. The BSNL employees’ union has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him not to go ahead with the merger.
“We wish to express our serious concern regarding the merger of BSNL and MTNL. The BSNL employees are genuinely concerned that the merger will certainly ruin the financial condition of BSNL. Due to this reason, right from the beginning, the employees of BSNL have been firmly opposing the merger of BSNL and MTNL,” P Abhimanyu, general secretary, BSNL Employees’ Union, said in the letter.
The government is planning to merge BSNL, MTNL and BBNL (Bharat Broadband Network) — which is implementing the BharatNet project — to create a single state-owned telecom entity.
The latest move for such a merger is being planned despite the government’s failure to merge BSNL and MTNL in the past. The Union Cabinet had decided to merge BSNL and MTNL in October 2019 but the merger has not taken place so far due to the latter’s high debt burden.
The letter quoted BSNL CMD PK Purwar’s statement, wherein he stated that the debt of MTNL was 26,000 crore while the revenues were only1,300 crore.
“Already BSNL is struggling hard to come out of its financial crisis. In this situation, if MTNL is merged with BSNL, it will only do irreparable damage to the financial revival of BSNL,” the letter added.
In order to make the state-run firms profitable, the government is planning to infuse funds to the tune of 1.60 trillion, of which36,260 crore would be cash support for BSNL/MTNL over the next three years.
The government feels that once such a merger is complete, the combined entity would be able to focus on pan-India 4G wireless services, fixed line fibre broadband services, and enterprise services in a more effective and cohesive manner.
