Saima Bhat
Srinagar
The recent decision by the Tata Tele Services Limited to wind up its cellular and broadband services has left its customers, employees and franchises in Jammu and Kashmir shocked.
Owais, one of the franchise partners, said the company didn’t inform them about the winding-up but they came to know about it through newspapers. “The company has given their statement to newspapers that they will refund the customers but they have not said how they are going to do it. The customers have now started coming up at our outlets for refund but we have not received any information from the authorities”.
“We manage the franchise on our own. When we receive the device (Tata Photon) and bill charges from customers, the funds go directly into the company accounts. We only receive 0.9 per cent per device as commission,” another franchise owner said.
The 16 franchise partners protested in Srinagar on Wednesday morning claiming that they had invested Rs 5 lakhs per franchise license while some of them had left their other jobs and family business. With Tata bidding goodbye to services in J&K, they are left with no hope.
The decision of the company came just a month after Rahul Gandhi and Omar Abdullah hosted the tycoons of Indian industry, including Ratan Tata, with new hopes of creating jobs and bringing investment in the state. But the decision of Tata has come up as a shock, the protesting Tata franchise partners said.
Tata began services in 2008 in the state and the company will formally wind up its services by January 17 next year.
every big multination company leaves our state like this……..
one day thr ll b left no private sector in kashmir if our government remains silent on this issue