Mumbai phones go dead after VRS drains MTNL of staff

Shiv Kumar

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Tribune News Service

Mumbai, February 25

Subscribers to Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd”s telephone and broadband Internet services are at the receiving end as more than 80 per cent of its employees have opted for the Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS). Due to this, phones of MTNL subscribers have gone dead.

Worse still, subscribers have nowhere to complain because most of the agents handling customer services at MTNL”s call centres have also opted for retirement.

“Most of the employees who have opted for VRS are from Class C (clerical) and Class D (linesmen and technical personnel) categories,” says a senior official from the MTNL Mumbai”s head office at Prabhadevi.

An official says there is no solution in sight since the MTNL is not planning to hire any staff.

Senior officials initially requested employees who had opted for the VRS to pitch in. Those who did were deployed to main telephone systems at Mantralaya, the state government secretariat and offices of the Chief Minister and other officials. For the past few days, however, most of the linesmen have not been showing up.

“In some of the exchange centres, there are just one or two officers remaining,” said Dilip Jadhav of the MTNL Kamgar Sangh.

According to the sangh, the MTNL has more than 14 lakh landline subscribers, five lakh broadband users and 10 lakh mobile subscribers in Mumbai alone. The utility has about 125 exchange centres across the city.