People's Democracy

THE BSNL Employees Union has strongly condemned the TRAI order reducing drastically the rate of Access Deficit Charge (ADC) to be paid by private operators to public sector telephone companies BSNL and MTNL.

BSNLEU general secretary V A N Namboodiri in a statement on January 6 demanded the UPA government to immediately intervene in this matter and see that the order is rescinded.

The ADC is charged from private operators to BSNL, MTNL etc. for enabling them to expand their network of land-line subscribers, particularly in rural areas. Provision and maintenance of telephones in villages and remote areas result in heavy loss to BSNL. The ADC is charged in order to reduce at least a portion of the big loss. The BSNL is getting around Rs 5,000 crore through ADC.

It may be recalled to avoid payment of ADC, the Reliance Infocom technically manipulated ILD calls to local/STD calls and cheated the BSNL and MTNL to the extent of thousands of crores of rupees. The Supreme Court has already ordered Reliance to pay the amount to BSNL.

Namboodiri stated that instead of strictly implementing the ADC regime, the TRAI has now reduced the ADC charges to help the private operators. He warned this will result in BSNL incurring huge losses. And consequently it will be compelled to increase the local tariff as well as rent which will be against the interests of crores of telephone subscribers.