BSNL Chairman and Managing Director Anupam Shrivastava said the recruitment of Junior Engineers (JEs) into the telecom company has been frozen by the Department of Telecom on the basis of complaints.
“It is being held up by the Department of Telecom… due to complaints,” Shrivastava said in response to questions by candidates who have qualified in the exams conducted in September 2016.
Asked if any of the candidates may be deleted from the merit list, Shrivastava indicated it is too early to say. “Complaints are under investigation,” he said.
A total of 2,700 Junior Engineers were supposed to be recruited through the all-India written exam.
It also postponed a similar drive to hire management trainees till further orders. The exam for the same has not even been conducted.
The mega recruitment into the company came after several years of low or zero recruitment.
BSNL was, at one time, considered an attractive career option for any engineer qualified in telecom or IT.
However, with the company facing problems in retaining customers, the focus shifted to reducing costs and making do with existing staff. As a result, very little recruitment has happened in the last several years.
The lack of fresh talent has in turn impacted BSNL’s ability to generate new ideas and keep up with the fast-evolving technology and market.
Keen to curb corruption, the present Narendra Modi government abolished the practice of holding interviews for lower level employees. However, despite this, the DoT is reported to have got several complaints about the question paper and allegations about leakages and so on, which prompted it to freeze the recruitment.
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