SLT fixed line telephone service on the decline
View(s):Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT), the only fixed wire-line telecommunications service provider in the country, is grappling with a sharp increase in fixed wire-line disconnections and dropping demand for new connections, SLT, trade union leaders said.
While the SLT lost 63,915 subscribers last year, it has failed to attract new customers due to a weakness in the marketing plan and its implementation. The number of new connections in 2016 dropped to 88,735, from 101,356 in the previous year, they said.
The SLT disconnected telephones of at least 75 per cent of those 63,915 subscribers as they failed to pay accumulated arrears of telephone bills running up to millions of rupees.
The other 25 per cent was voluntary disconnections due to poor after-sales service of SLT’s outsourcing companies, the alleged.
The SLT has not taken any legal action to recover a large sum of dues from defaulters, trade unionists said blaming the poor management of the legal department of the company.
However they noted that most of these subscribers had to disconnect their telephones due to economic difficulties while some others shifted to fixed wireless and mobile telephony.
The SLT is now running on a bank overdraft of Rs.14 billion , an office bearer of SLT Trade Union Front comprising 13 telecom unions said.
In a statement, the Trade Union Front noted that the top officials are now trying to outsource the telecom services as solution for the precarious situation of the company.
The LTE (Long Term Evolution) service maintained by the SLT has now been outsourced to Mobitel, the statement alleged. New connection service of the SLT and several other services have been outsourced to some other service providers.
The company is paying a sum of Rs.9,500 per day and Rs.17,500 per day for service providers for untrained outsourced team’s carryout repairs on faults and make new IPTV connections .
These service providers in turn give subcontract the work to others keeping a commission of Rs.3,500 per repair work on faults and Rs. 6,500 per day by acting as middle men.
On the other hand the company has also outsourced telephone line maintenance services deploying 300 teams per day although it has a permanent cadre of over 2000 workers for maintenance work and attend to telephone faults of subscribers. In addition the company’s subsidiary Human Capital Solutions unit has over 700 workers to carry out this same task.
Even under this set up the company is outsourcing these services spending a large some of Rs.5,000 million per annum.
The SLT Trade Union Front has made complaints on these fraudulent activities to CEO Dileepa Wijesundera but it was unheeded, trade union leaders said.
Mr. Wijesundera could not be contacted for his comments as he is currently overseas.