Employees of country's first PSU seek its revival

THE nation’s first public sector undertaking (PSU) is in disarray and the employees of Indian Telephone Industry (ITI) have sought government support in its revival and early release of their unpaid salaries and emoluments, a government release said.
A delegation of ITI employees met Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office Jitendra Singh and submitted a memorandum seeking early readdress of their long-pending demands.
In a memorandum submitted...
to Dr Jitendra Singh, the ITI officials pointed out that in 2014 budget, with the kind intervention of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, a revival package was approved to put the company back on the rails and requested that the same budgetary allocation may also be included in the forthcoming budget of 2016-17, the statement added.
In addition, the memorandum also pointed out that due to the crunch faced by the company, salaries are not paid regularly and even the salary that is paid is based on the scale of 5th Pay Commission. The memorandum also made certain suggestions including the options to liquidate the bank loan taken by the company and thus overcome the liability. The employees also urged for immediate revival of ITI Limited so that it can play its expected and effective role in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship programmes like “Make in India” and “Digital India”.
ITI has acquired a technology of Software Defined Radio (SDR) and if properly supported, it is capable of offering complete range of indigenous SDR, they said.
“The suggestions made by the ITI officials will be put up before the Union Ministry of Communications and Information Technology,” the statement quoted Dr Jitendra Singh as telling the delegation.
The memorandum also made certain suggestions including the options to liquidate the bank loan taken by the company to overcome the liability.
ITI has acquired a technology of Software Defined Radio (SDR) and if properly supported, it is capable of offering complete range of indigenous SDR, the memorandum said.
Besides Subhash Chandra Singh, Chairman, prominent office bearers of the ITI joint action front who accompanied the delegation included Sushma Kashyap Dhar, Naresh Kumar and Lokesh Sharma.
The government had in last February approved a soft loan of Rs 200 crore for paying salaries to employees of loss-making ITI Ltd with an aim to mitigate the hardship being faced by the company in paying its employees.
Established just one year after Independence, ITI Ltd was converted into a PSU in 1950, making it the first in the country.
The PSU incurred accumulated losses to the tune of Rs 4,527 crore as on March 31, 2013.
With state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities spread across six locations and a countrywide network of marketing/service outlets, the company offers a complete range of telecom products and total solutions covering the whole spectrum of Switching, Transmission, Access and Subscriber Premises equipment.
ITI joined the league of world class vendors of Global System for Mobile (GSM) technology with the inauguration of mobile equipment manufacturing facilities at its Mankapur and Rae Bareli Plants in 2005-06. This ushered in a new era of indigenous mobile equipment production in the country. These two facilities supply more than nine million lines per annum to both domestic as well as export markets.
The company is consolidating its diversification into Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to hone its competitive edge in the convergence market by deploying its rich telecom expertise and vast infrastructure. Network Management Systems, Encryption and Networking Solutions for Internet Connectivity are some of the major initiatives taken by the company.\
The PSU has its R&D centres in Bangalore, Naini and Mankapur and its total employee strength is 5477, according to the website of the PSU.