The employees of the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) began their three-day token ‘dharna’ in front of the Dharwad Telecom District General Manager’s office here on Tuesday seeking fulfilment of their 21 demands.
The three-day token dharna is in response to the call for nationwide protest given by the Joint Forum of BSNL Executives and Non-Executives Union, New Delhi to press for what they term as their rightful demands.
Led by the office bearers of the Dharwad Telecom District Unit of the union, they staged dharna raising slogans against the union government for failing to fulfil their demands.
Addressing the protestors, BSNL officials B. Ravindranath Patil, S.B. Jagadale, Harish Doddamani, B. Shivashankarappa, Anand Bellur and G.G. Patil and others said that in all 2.5 lakh BSNL employees were participating in the three-day protest launched as part of the ‘Save BSNL, Save Nation’ campaign.
The speakers said that the 21 demands submitted to the union government were purely intended at the welfare of the company and its employees. They also wanted the union government to take steps to strengthen the company so that it would be able to compete with private companies in the coming years.
Some of their demands are: granting compensation for loss on landlines for rural area service; procuring equipment for development, expansion and better service; focus on laying Optical Fibre Cable to strengthen transmission network; dropping proposal for merger of BSNL and MTNL; free allotment of spectrum to BSNL and financial assistance to BSNL to expand network as assured earlier; initiation of 4G services at the earliest and others. The union is also demanding that BSNL services should be made mandatory to all central and state government departments and Public Sector Undertakings.
The union office bearers later told presspersons that if the union government was apathetic towards their demands, they would be forced to launch ‘Parliament Chalo’ on February 25.
