Business

BSNL employees on warpath seeking removal of CMD Purwar

BSNL employee unions believe that CMD Purwar failed in his capacity to help revive the plummeting fortunes of the telecom major.

State-owned telecom behemoth BSNL’s Chairman and Managing Director P K Purwar is the subject of all the ire, the telecommunications company’s employees are venting these days.

The employee unions are on the warpath seeking the removal of BSNL CMD PK Purwar, and the reason they hold against him is his failure to revive the company.

As per a circular issued by the All Unions and Associations of BSNL (AUAB), the unions will organise a black-flag event on October 26, 2021, demanding settlement of the charter of demands. Significantly enough, the charter of demands has in it the removal of P K Purwar from his post.

Employees to start social media campaign against P K Purwar

Further, the unions are also planning to take out a social media campaign starting October 6 demanding his removal. The unions believe that Purwar has failed in his capacity to help revive the flagging fortunes of the telecom major. They believe that there is absolutely no possibility of reviving BSNL as long as Purwar stays in his position as CMD.

Expressing disappointment and anguish over Purwar’s irresponsible behaviour, the unions said that all the leaders of various BSNL unions are a worried lot as Purwar had not taken any step to save the company even after the approval of the revival package announced in 2019. The package had also recommended settling the problems of the employees, which too went unheard.

3-day protest in Sept was sabotaged by BSNL Management, say unions

Blaming Purwar for being mainly responsible for the all-around failure of the company, the unions said that that the BSNL management had tried to sabotage a 3-day protest organised in September.

The Union government had some time ago announced a revival package of about Rs 69,000 crore to BSNL and MTNL in October 2019 which in turn helped both the state-owned firms PSUs to bring down their losses. Though BSNL cut losses to Rs 7,441 crore in 2020-21 from Rs 15,500 crore in 2019-20, the company’s debt statistics still show that it stands close to Rs 30,000 crore.

Pointing out the BSNL should have unveiled 4G services before April 2020 by just upgrading 49,300 mobile towers which have 4G compatible technology, the unions alleged that Purwar did nothing to make that happen.

They also alleged that Purwar as BSNL CMD had imposed a ban on the promotion of the employees, thereby ruining their future career prospects.

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Sanjeev Ramachandran

A journalist with 23 years of experience, Sanjeev has worked with reputed media houses such as Business Standard, The Ne More »
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