In its report submitted to Parliament on Tuesday, the committee recommended that the DoT adhere to more intensive measures to modernise to avoid obsolescence of its equipment.

Due to obsolescence and lack of timely modernisation and development of new technologies, many of their products were not required by the department. This invariably resulted in stoppage of production of such items and the consequent idling of the work force.

The parliamentary committee noted that the DoT had claimed that it had tried to help the telecom factories in developing new products and thereby reduce the idle work force to the best extent possible. This claim was, however, not substantiated during the committee members' visit to various factories.

"The factories are in very bad shape and work force is demoralised", thecommittee said in its report adding that the number of ildle workers had, of course, come down to 255 in 1998-99 from 333 during the previous year at Mumbai factory and 100 at Calcutta factory.

Stating that valuable work force was going waste for lack of proper planning, the committee stressed on modernisation of the two factories besides continuing the present efforts so that the idle work force in these two telecom factories is properly utilised for productive purposes.

The committee noted that the Calcutta telecom factory had entered into a collaboration with Krone, a multi-national company for producing new items which include modems, cable connectors, button key telephone, card pay phone, transmission towers etc.

The committee directed the DoT to take necessary steps so that the modernisation of the factories takes place on the desired lines.

Significantly, the committee during tour to Mumbai and Calcutta factories in October last year was apprised that these factories were not gettingsufficient orders from the DoT and that idle work force had increased considerably.

The committee was also told that the DoT procured from outside manufacturers those very products which the telecom factories were capable of producing. Further, no tenders were floated by the DoT for procuring the equipment nor any commercial accounting practice was followed.

When the committee confronted the DoT with these observations, the DoT,however, replied that the entire production production of the telecom factories was utilised to meet the needs of the department and that outside procurement was resorted to only for those items whose demand exceeded the production capacity of the factories.