British telecom firm Belair Communications has shut its captive call centre in Bangalore without compensating its 93 sacked employees.
BANGALORE: British telecom firm Belair Communications has shut its captive call centre in Bangalore without compensating its 93 sacked employees.
Belair Communications India Pvt. Ltd., registered with the state-run Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) as an export unit, informed its employees in June of the decision. Employees allege that the firm has not paid salaries and compensation since May.
The company began operations a year ago, but did not cite any reason for the pulling down its shutters, according to UNITES, the union for ITES professionals.
UNITES has lodged a complaint with the Labour Commissioner here, seeking an enquiry and the initiation of appropriate action against the firm under the Industrial Dispute Act 1947.
Belair India website claims that it is a captive centre of Belair Communications UK Ltd., and that it offers transaction processing and call centre services. Calls to both the Indian office and the UK numbers were not answered.
“It seems to be a fly-by-night operation. The employees are jobless now,” UNITES India General Secretary R Karthik Shekhar told DNA.
He alleged that India’s software body Nasscom has been blind to the plight of workers, despite being informed about the sudden closure of the British call centre.
Nasscom President Kiran Karnik told DNA that he was not aware of the development and the industry body would not be able to comment on individual companies. “There should be another side of the story. I would not be able to comment now,” he said.
British energy firm Powergen said last month that it was moving back about 1,000 jobs outsourced to India because it was not prepared to achieve savings at the expense of customer satisfaction.
Last month, IT major Apple Computer also shut its 20-member captive call centre citing high costs of operations in Bangalore. US data infrastructure product vendor Pervasive Software followed suit shortly. Both the firms now outsource their work to third party Indian vendors.
STPI Bangalore Director BV Naidu said that the firm was registered with the government-run body to promote software exports in the country, but would investigate further details of the operations of the company on Monday.
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