People's Democracy

CITU DEMANDS ENQUIRY INTO CAG REPORT

On Loss Of BSNL Shares In Cmts Customer Base

CITU issued the following statement on July 2, 2007:

The Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) expresses its grave concern on the CAG report No. 10 of 2007 placed in parliament which shows meagre 25 per cent as BSNL’s share in the country’s total cellular mobile telephone services (CMTS) customer base. As per CAG report the major cause of loss of customer base of BSNL has been due to failure of BSNL to procure 641 lakh lines which was approved by BSNL Board in January 2005, so that expansion project could be completed by December 2007. CITU is shocked to note that even the selection of suppliers has not been completed and CAG has chronologically shown as to how the whole tendering process was vitiated and delayed by intervention of the erstwhile minister of communications or the government nominee in the BSNL board. The inordinate delay as per CAG has led to astounding growth of private telecom operators at the cost of BSNL. CITU therefore demands an enquiry into role of the concerned minister and government nominees in BSNL board, which has led to the delay when BSNL had a standardised and well proven procurement policy since 2001.

CITU further demands that as per the recommendation of CAG, government must ensure immediate finalisation of the entire procurement process to avoid the delay in procurement, installation and commission of the CMTS equipments and there should be no undue intervention in techno-commercial matters of procurement by ministers or bureaucrats.

CITU fully shares the concern and apprehensions of the employees of BSNL that there may be further delay in procurement process through re-tendering to give more time to private telecom operators to further expand their base. INN