Postal, Telecom Staff Launch Stir

Announcing this at a news conference here, communications minister Beni Prasad Verma said there was no need for the employees to go on strike as the government was sympathetic to their demands.

Describing their demands for removal of disparity on elegibility ceiling with railway employees as "not unreasonable", Verma said since he himself had been "advocating" the cause of the workers as a pro-labour leader they should have waited for some more time. "By resorting to strike, the workers have weakened their case," he said.

Telecom workers are pressing for abolition of the Rs 3,500-ceiling on productivity-linked bonus.

All the three major telecom and postal unions -- National Federation of Telecom Employees, Federation of National Telecom Employees and Bharatiya Telecom Employees Federation -- are taking part in the strike. The unions had struck work last year in June against privatisation of telecom services.

 

The "near-total" strike has not yet affected essential services like telecom and posts significantly, union leaders said. But agency reports from West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, however, said the services were "badly hit". The situation is expected to deteriorate if the strike continues for couple of days.

Telecom unions said in a statement that automatic local telephones and STD services were not affected but manual services like trunk, auto-manual, fault repair and counter services had come to a halt, they said. Besides the postal and telecom employees, 10 lakh central government employees not covered under the productivity-linked bonus scheme are also on strike. S K Vyas, secretary-general of the Confederation of Central Government Employees, claimed the strike was near-total in all the states except Delhi.