BSNL, MTNL VRS numbers touch 92,878 on closing day

In one of the successful exercises of VRS in CPSEs, as many as 92,878 employees of BSNL and MTNL availed the voluntary retirement option with BSNL accounting for 78,500 and MTNL for 14,378 as the scheme closed on Tuesday after a month long running.

BSNL Chairman and MD P.K. Purwar told IANS: "The final count is 78,500. It is up to our expectation. We have 1.51 lakh employees...after VRS, 70,000 will be left with us."

His MTNL counterpart Sunil Kumar told IANS that their final figure is 14,378.

"Now, we're left with 4,430 employees. This is the ideal requirement. Its a very competitive figure on number of employees."

BSNL has a salary bill of Rs 850 crore a month and MTNL of Rs 2,270 crore. They will now see a substantial reduction in the HR expenses which will help them return to operating profit after cutting down their losses in two years.

BSNL has a loss of Rs 14,500 crore in 2018-19 and MTNL posted a Q2 loss of Rs 949 crore in the current fiscal and a loss of Rs 3,388.07 crore and revenue of Rs 2,085.41 crore in 2018-19. The total debt on the company is around Rs 20,000 crore. The finance cost on MTNL was around 50 per cent of the revenue.