More than 57,000 employees of the State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) have opted for voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) that the government recently opened and around 4,000 from Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), a senior government official said on Friday.

“Out of the target 83,000 people, we had made, around 57,000 employees of BSNL have opted for VRS till this (Friday) evening and around 3,500 employees of MTNL, out of the target 15,000. This shows that the scheme was well thought out," Anshu Prakash, Secretary, Department of Telecommunications told reporters here on the sidelines of an event.

The government had opened the VRS scheme on November 4 for both the public sector units and till Thursday, BSNL had received over 22,800 employees applying for it through the company's portal.

Read more:Over 22,800 BSNL staff sign up for VRS

While BSNL has a total of around 1.60 lakh employees across the country, MTNL has a total of around 22,000 people in Delhi and Mumbai. The VRS scheme is based on the Gujarat model and is open till December 3.

This is one of the biggest incentive schemes planned by the government on VRS and has also received extra-ordinary responses from the employees of both the companies, said another senior official adding that government has decided for a liberal way out instead of closing down the companies or selling off to a third party.

According to ‘BSNL Voluntary Retirement Scheme - 2019’, all regular and permanent employees of BSNL including those on deputation to other organisations or posted outside BSNL on deputation basis, who attended the age of 50 years or above are eligible to seek voluntary retirement under the scheme.

BSNL is looking to save about ₹7,000 crore in wage bill, considering around 80,000 personnel opt for the scheme. The amount of ex-gratia for any eligible employee will be equal to 35 days salary for each completed year of service and 25 days salary for every year of service left until superannuation, as per the VRS scheme.

In a notice issued by MTNL to employees recently, it mentioned that ‘all regular and permanent employees of 50 years and above as on January 31, 2020’, are eligible to opt for the scheme.

The Cabinet on October 24 had approved the plan to merge MTNL - which provides services in Mumbai and New Delhi - with BSNL that has services across the country.

The revival package approved by the government includes infusion of ₹20,140 crore for purchase of 4G spectrum, ₹3,674 crore for GST to be paid on spectrum allocation, companies raising ₹15,000 crore in debt on the sovereign guarantee and government funding ₹17,160 crore VRS and another ₹12,768 crore towards retirement liability.

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