Biman inundated with applications for voluntary retirement

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Naim-Ul-Karim
About 2,100 officials and employees of the Biman Bangladesh Airlines (BBA), the national flag carrier, have sought voluntary retirement responding to the government offer for golden handshake.
The deadline for application under golden handshake ended Wednesday, which was offered June 4.
The BBA has planned to send a proposal to the government early next week seeking Tk 5.0 billion for payment of dues and benefits to its officials and officials who have opted to retire voluntarily.
"We have decided to seek Tk 5.0 billion instead of Tk 2.96 billion to the Ministry of Finance by Thursday or Sunday as the number of applicants for voluntary retirement was more than estimated earlier," said a high official of the BBA.
Besides, he said the authority concerned is toiling hard to complete all the documentary formalities to turn Biman into a public limited company (PLC) by July 1.
The Memorandum of Association (MA) and the Articles of Association (AA) for converting Biman into a PLC, is likely to be sent by June 23 to the ministry of civil aviation for submitting the same before the advisory council for approval, source said.
Sources also said an inter-ministerial meeting held with adviser to the ministry of civil aviation Maj Gen M A Matin in the chair Wednesday finalised the decision to send the draft of MA and AA to the advisory council for approval.
Representatives of the ministries of law, foreign affairs, commerce and establishment attended the meeting.
The meeting decided that a seven to ten member board of directors would run Biman when it becomes PLC, source said.
Sources said at the initial stage Biman might downsize the manpower of Biman at least by 1250.
"Applications of those of officials and employees who have sound technical knowledge, good service record and have enough length of service left, will not be considered in the interest of Biman.
However, some employees alleged that they were being forced to seek voluntary retirement. But the Biman management dismissed the allegation saying that everyone was opting for retirement voluntarily.
Biman has long been incurring huge financial losses on many air routes, both domestic and international. The national flag carrier incurred a loss of around Tk 10 billion over last few years.