Over 92,000 staff of BSNL, MTNL opt for VRS

NEW DELHI: The government’s generous Rs 30,000 crore VRS package for ailing telecom PSUs — BSNL and MTNL — closed on Tuesday, with over 92,000 employees opting to move out early and resulting in savings of a little over Rs 8,700 crore for them.
CMD of the two companies told TOI that the reduction in manpower will help them move towards profitability over the next three years as they save the much-required cash, while launching services such as 4G to lure new high-paying subscribers.
“The VRS scheme has met our expectations and for BSNL, the annual savings post the reduction in employees will be Rs 7,000 crore,” CMD Pravin Kumar Purwar told TOI. BSNL is estimated to have losses of around Rs 14,000 crore in 2018-19. It had nearly 1.5 lakh employees before VRS offer. Purwar hopes that a leaner company will be more productive, while sufficient cash at the hands of the management can be put to work out a revival. “We expect to complete the VRS process by the end of January next year. This will be a major relief to shore up our finances,” he said.