Within two weeks of offering voluntary retirement to 612 officers, state owned MTNL on Tuesday signed up another 1300 Group 'C' and 'D' employees for separation.
"The third round of VR scheme was opened only for 15-20 days and as many as 1300 employees sought retirement. We have already signed agreement and with effect from June 1 all of them shall be relieved," R S P Sinha, CMD, MTNL told PTI.
Asked about the financial package offered to employees, Sinha said, "as always we have been offering very attractive package... We have ensured that all employees are taken good care of even after retirement."
Earlier this month 612 employees were relieved for which MTNL had kept aside about Rs 170 crore. For the current round, Sinha said details were being worked out.
This is an achievement as the company managed to introduce three rounds of VRS within a span of one year despite tremendous pressure from the unions against job cuts.
Last year, MTNL had separated over 1,900 employees in the Group C and D category. "No doubt that MTNL has about 20 per cent workforce. We
are trying to leverage it in two ways -- by increasing the turnover/revenue from our operations and secondly by offering attractive VRS ensuring that they are not at disadvantage," Sinha said.
"We want our retired employees to be happy" he said. With the completion of third round of VRS, MTNL has a workforce of little about 50,000 and that of Group-C and D would be about 41,000.
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