Tough times ahead for BSNL

DIFFICULT DAYS are ahead for the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited here, the reason being dearth of staff and indifferent attitude of the Central Government towards appointment on posts lying vacant .

If prompt action is not taken soon in this direction the BSNL services are set to deteriorate further. If official sources are to be believed then many telephone exchanges may stop functioning in next two to three years in absence of staff.

Interestingly, the BSNL claim of working round the clock and providing world class telecom services for citizens now seems to be  a far cry.

The working is badly affected in wake of retirement of employees every month while the workload is doubling on the existing staff. Nearly 12 officers and 36 employees of BSNL here will be retiring by this year end.

Remarkably, over one thousand officers and employees have retired from BSNL here during the last 22 years. Considering the present trend, only 15 per cent staff  will remain in service here by December 15, 2008.

At BSNL, no appointment has been made since  1984. As many as 51 employees and half a dozen officials were superannuated in 2005.  Officials said they sent the list of superannuating staff to the headquarters every month but no action is taken so far. BSNL here is facing a dearth of 60 per cent line men at present.

The staff crunch is telling upon the services like billing, complaints of phone faults, poor connectivity etc.  Despite Information Technology boom the BSNL here has failed to provide online billing.

A large number of subscribers do not get the phone bill at home and even the duplicate bill on internet thereby causing unavoidable pain to them.

Two years back, a  portal www.allahabad.dotindia was launched to provide the duplicate bill facility to harried subscribers.

However this online facility is not working for more than one year.

Interestingly, the authorities concerned are still not aware about non-functioning of the site.

As a result the subscribers are the ultimate sufferers running from pillar to post to get their duplicate bills. They get the duplicate bill after passing through several hardships. Counters made for duplicate bills  are insufficient and have no proper facilities for the harried subscribers.