Morung Express News
October 27
DIMAPUR: Lone Lok Sabha Member of Parliament from Nagaland Wangyuh Konyak has appealed to the Prime Minister to intervene and address the grievances of 3000 telecom engineers who were being forced to be absorbed in the PSU-BSNL under unacceptable terms.
In a letter (dated October 25) to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a copy of which was obtained by The Morung Express, Konyak sought attention to the action of the Department of Telecom circumventing rules and court orders to force Indian Telecom Service (ITS) engineers of Group-A to be absorbed in the PSU-BSNL in spite of legal injunction staying the process.
The MP maintained that the terms of absorption had been found to be unacceptable and unreasonable to ITS Engineers and that the DoT administration “is hell bent” on imposing unacceptable conditions. Stating that in the event of non-settlement of this issue, Konyak cautioned that the Telecom engineers would leave the BSNL and be declared as surplus, as per indication given by the telecom department.
“It will be an irony that they may not do telecom related job at all in the future when dispensed with due to the prevailing rules. These telecom engineers with 5 years to 30 years services experience are therefore a valuable national source” he said.
Pointing out that the engineers from the elite Group-A service had joined telecommunication after competing in the UPSC’s All India Competitive Examinations for Engineers, Konyak asserted ‘these creamy layer’ of telecom engineers including PhDs, M.Techs, IITs, B.Techs had spearheaded India’s telecom revolution. He cautioned that unless the matter was looked into “I can confidently say that all your present ongoing telecom projects are going to be thrown in the dustbin and as a political leader answerable to the people of North East. I will be forced to take your government to task.”
