Around 1 lakh employees in BSNL opt for VRS scheme

Around 1 lakh employees working in the the Public Sector undertaking (PSU) Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has applied for early retirement scheme.

Around 92,000 employees of state-owned telecom service provider have opted for the recently launched Voluntary Retirement Scheme.

Nearly one lakh BSNL employees are eligible for the Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) out of its total staff strength of about 1.50 lakh. The effective date of voluntary retirement under the present scheme is January 31, 2020.

The ‘BSNL Voluntary Retirement Scheme – 2019’, that was launched out on November 4 will remain open till December 3.

The Union Cabinet had last month approved a plan to combine MTNL – which provides services in Mumbai and New Delhi – with BSNL that services the rest of the nation.

MTNL has reported losses in nine of the past 10 years and BSNL too has been ringing in loss since 2010. The total debt on both companies stood at Rs 40,000 crore, of which half of the liability is on MTNL alone.

BSNL has a total of 1.60 lakh employees and MTNL has 22,000 employees. The VRS scheme is open till December 5.