CHENNAI: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has broken the gender barrier after appointing for the first time, a woman as chief general manager of a BSNL circle - a first in the country.
A BSNL spokesperson said that S M Kalavathi became the first lady to become the Chief General Manager of a BSNL circle in the entire country after she was elevated to head Chennai Telephones. Belonging to the 1981 batch of Indian Telecommunication Service, Kalavathi, who took charge as CGM on Friday, has the distinction of being the third lady to enter the Indian Telecom Service. She succeeds A Balasubramanian.
After serving as General Manager in other places like Pondichery and Kerala, she joined Chennai Telephones in the year 2012 and has been working here as senior general manager prior to her elevation as Chief General Manager.
Having specialized in Switching and Transmission systems, she has been instrumental for installation of the first WLL exchange in Tamil Nadu, in Pondichery and the National Internet Backbone in Chennai. It was during her tenure as General Manager that the Northern area of Chennai Telephones saw a vast improvement in the quality of telecom services thus emerging as a model area for the other areas to follow.
She has attended many international training programmes like Total Quality Management in Sweden in the year 1991 and National Internet Backbone in Singapore and US in the year 2000.