BSNL employees on nationwide strike today

New Delhi, July 11: Telecom services across the country were disrupted today as nearly 3,40,000 employees of BSNL went on a day-long strike to protest the Centre's delay in finalising a global tender to procure 45.5 million GSM connections.

The strike started at around 0600 am.

''We will sit on strike for the whole day. If the management does not comes out with a final decision by today evening, we will be forced to go an indefinite strike,'' V A N Namboodiri, who represents BSNL workers said.

A total of nine unions, representing staff and officials are involved in the strike.

The strike is going to hit 7.5 crore BSNL landline and three crore mobile users in the country.

The strike would also affect all manual services provided by BSNL employees, including cash collection and customer service all over the country.

The employees are demanding immediate fulfilment of the BSNL's GSM service expansion tender, which seems to be on verge of being scrapped by the telecom ministry.

The tender was the outcome of a more than year-long process under which four foreign firms, including Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens and ZTP, were to collaborate with BSNL in expanding its technology and machinery for setting up six crore additional GSM connections.

The tender was first put up in October 2005, with decision taken regarding tender conditions and appointment of an empowered committee. The tender was called in May 2006 and parties submitted their bids in the following month.

Due to certain technical reasons one of the bidding parties, Motorola, was barred from participating in the tender process, which made Motorola approach the Delhi high court and obtain a stay in the proceedings. Later in April this year, Motorola withdrew its petition and the tender process was resumed.

UNI