Turning Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board into a PLC
On March 2, 2008 Bangladesh council of advisers on Sunday in principle approved a draft ordinance for turning the Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) a one-time monopoly and the largest fixed line entity, into a public limited company, named Bangladesh Telecom Company Limited nearly four years after the process was initiated.
According to the approved draft ordinance, the state-owned BTTB will become a cent-per-cent government-owned public limited company named Bangladesh Telecom Company Ltd. The state-owned mobile operator, Teletalk Bangladesh Ltd, will be its subsidiary but will be run by a separate management.
The authorised capital of BTCL is Tk 3,000 crore, comprising 30 crore shares of Tk 100 each.
The proposed company will have a nine-member board with the telecom secretary as its chairman and the company’s managing director as the member-secretary.
After independence, Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone (T&T) Department was created under the telecoms ministry to run telecommunication services on a commercial basis.
T&T Department was restructured into Bangladesh Telephone and Telegraph Board (BTTB) in 1979 with a mandate to provide telecommunication services throughout the country.
The number of BTTB employees now stands at around 15,000 against the total of 19,500 sanctioned by the government. The BTTB has not recruited any new staffers since 1984.
The BTTB earns Tk 1,500 crore on an average a year, which it deposits with the exchequer. It gets an allocation under the Annual Development Programme to bear its operational costs.
Leave Your Comments