BSNL employees strike affects telecommunication services in country

New Delhi/Kolkata, Aug.19 (ANI): The strike call given by employees of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) affected telecommunication services across the country on Wednesday.

While the United Forum of BSNL Unions has called a 48-hour strike on August 19-20, the AIGETOA with over 10,000 engineers as its members, has called for an indefinite strike.

The All India Graduate Telecom Officers Association (AIGETOA), a forum of BNL engineers gave a call for a strike on Tuesday over the demand that officers on deputation for the last four years must be absorbed into the company so that they become more accountable alongside inculcating work culture in the organisation with an effective corporate objective.

The agitating engineers in the capital said that the company was incurring losses and demanded absorption of officers who had been deputed from Department of Telecommunications (DoT).

"We are on strike to save the BSNL. In the last four years, the profit of BSNL has gone down from rupees 8000 crore to rupees 104 crore. We have been in the company for the last four to five years but our future is not secured. We are worried that if the company keeps on running in losses like this, we will be the worst sufferers. We have to serve the company for the next 30 more years and if it runs on losses like today, we have nowhere to go as we have become attached to the company," said R P Singh, General Secretary, AIGETOA, New Delhi.

He also said that they would go on hunger strike if their demands were not met.

Meanwhile, United Forum of seven BSNL Unions of over 100,000 non-executive employees also stopped work in support of the engineers.

The agitating workers, who were demanding a wage revision, staged a sit-in demonstration in front of the BSNL office in Kolkata on Wednesday.

"It is most unfortunate the big officers in the industry they have got ...or the revised wages right from the Jan.1, 2007, but for the non-executives, they are making a derailed tactics. They want to ignore our legitimate demands," said Animesh Mitra, Secretary, Coordination Committee, BSNL Employees' Unions, Kolkata. (ANI)