Page 18 - TELEWAVE AUGUST-2015

19. Various illogical interests being paid by BSNL to Govt. of India, which is directly affecting the viability of BSNL. BSNL should be exempted from paying building tax, paying excise duty on SIM cards, paying exorbitant electricity bills by applying the logic of low usage of power instead of electricity being charged on the basis of power plant capacity, VTMs revised penalty charges and heavy charges being paid to municipality and panchayat for erecting towers whereas they are not charging anything from electricity companies. 20. Govt. should issue Instructions to all Govt. Departments/Autonomous Bodies where the Govt. of India bears the cost of telephone expenditure for taking the telecom services from BSNL only to support BSNL as it has done in case of National Carrier Air Line. BSNL is operating in a very stiff competitive environment with sharp reduction in tariffs in order to serve the people of the Country as a responsible PSU. BSNL is maintaining the rural network with very low tariff for serving the rural India. In addition to this reimbursement of ADC charges is also withdrawn which has adversely effected the financial position of BSNL. The fixed expenses of the company are also increasing year after year. It is observed that some of the Government Departments/Autonomous Bodies are inclined to switch over to private network for various reasons. The Ministry of Finance has issued instructions to all the Government Departments / Autonomous Bodies for undertaking the air travel by Air India only for both domestic and international travel where the Government of India bears the costs of air passage to support the Air India. 21. In pursuance of New Telecom Policy 1999, the Govt. of India decided to corporatize the service provision functions of DoT. Accordingly Govt. of India decided to transfer the business of providing telecom services in the country presently run and entrusted with the DTS and DTO as was provided earlier by DoT to the newly formed company viz. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited w.e.f. 01.10.2000. The assets and liability of present Department of Telecom Services and Department of Telecom Operations which earlier formed part of DoT were transferred to Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited except Sanchar Bhawan and few other buildings but in true sense till date all these assets have not been transferred to BSNL rather DoT administration is trying to take back the assets of BSNL on the pretext of opening TERM Cell / CCA Offices and Training Centers which is contrary to the Govt. of India Orders. Hence DoT should immediately transfer the Assets to BSNL as per Govt. of India Order. 22. Land, building, A&P, Cable, experienced workforce are our assets. All these assets are to be gainfully deployed to fetch additional revenue. There are vacant lands and large vacant space in buildings. These spaces are to be commercially exploited to get hundreds of crores additional revenue every year. Formation of special task force for this purpose will speed up to achieve the objective. Commercial hoardings in CSCs and other BSNL buildings, commercial advertisement in the telephone bills will also fetch additional revenue. 23. About 70% of the revenue of BSNL comes from landline services for which special care should be taken to increase the subscriber base and retain the existing subscribers by providing continues flows of store materials without any shortage and adopting regular maintenance for better service. 24. Recently Government has taken a decision to create BSNLs own Tower subsidiary Company for its tower business. The cabinet, in its meeting held on 05.08.2015 has given the “In-principle” approval to the proposal for hiving off the telecom tower infrastructure of BSNL into a separate subsidiary company which will be fully owned by BSNL. Consequent to approval, DoT will constitute an inter-ministerial group consisting of representatives of DPE, DoP PW and DEA for working out the capital structure and organizational structure of the new company after market valuation of its tower assets holding for consideration of the Union Cabinet. This will generate new revenue scheme and has potential to turn around BSNL. But this may benefit BSNL only when BSNL representation is given in the Inter - Ministerial Group and no joint venture is allowed in future. 25. BSNL Management has taken up the matter with DoT for modification in payment of pension contribution from highest of IDA pay scale to the actual basic pay from BSNL. As the case was referred to DoP&PW and DoP&T by DoT and DoT submitted that Ministry of Finance (Dept. of Expenditure) has not concurred the above proposal. Hence the Pension contribution in respect of absorbed BSNL employees are to be recovered as per the previous methodology. TELEWAVE Page-18 AUGUST-2015