Telecom services disrupted in Punjab, Haryana

Chandigarh, July 11 (UNI) Telecom services in Punjab and Haryana were disrupted today as BSNL employees went on a day-long strike, demanding immediate fulfilement of the BSNL's GSM service expansion tender.

BSNL services, including customer service and cash collection in the twin states, were affected due to the strike by the employees upto the level of Divisional Engineers Telecom.

The strike was complete in Punjab Circle as the employees, including DETs, SDOs, JTOs and the staff of Accounts branch, struck work, according to Sanchar Nigam Executive Assiciation Circle Secretary Amarjit Singh.

He said that BSNL had been facing precarious situation in terms of having reached a saturation point in the mobile sector. No action is being taken for placement of purchase order for 45.5 million GSM connections, he added.

However, the strike call had no impact in Chandigarh where the BSNL employees decided to attend to their duties in order to normalise the telephone services and other operations which were suspended due to fire in the Sector 17 BSNL Exchange recently.

UNI