Despite being one of the few profit-making public sector enterprises in the country, Palakkad’s Indian Telephone Industries (ITI) unit is now inching towards a crisis with the Union government attempting to divert the revenue generated by it to meet the financial needs of four loss-making units of the company located in other parts of the country.
Refusing to restore its financial autonomy, the Union Ministry of Communication has directed the Palakkad unit, located at Kanjikode here, to seek advance sanction from the headquarters in Bangalore even for its minute daily requirements. In addition, the profit from the Palakkad unit is being channelised to the centralised pool to meet salary and other needs of units in Bangalore, Rae Bareli, Mangapur and Srinagar, which are in the red.
While the Palakkad unit recorded net profit of ₹131 crore during the last fiscal alone, all other units now have accumulated losses of several crores of rupees. The Palakkad unit, which has earned profits for the last 23 years, has improved its performance in recent years by implementing diversification by joining hands with agencies such as ISRO, National Population Registry and Socio-Economic Caste Census and providing technological back-up to their missions. The Palakkad unit is also providing technological back-up to strengthen ATM networks across the country apart from developing technology for mobile number portability from one service provider to another.
While the more than 700 employees of the unit have dedicated themselves to efforts towards modernisation and producing maximum output, the poor performance of the other units of the company has prevented the Union government from making any salary revision here, which remains pending for the last 20 years. Disbursal of monthly salary is also being delayed by over 15 days every month because of administrative control from the Bangalore head office.
Established in 1947, ITI was the first PSU in Independent India. The company catered to the nation’s telecommunication requirements till the new telecom policy was rolled out in 1994. Then, the company was exposed to international competition. Devoid of own technology and experience in international marketing, the other units of ITI had lost ground.
