Hyderabad: The proposed maternity Bill will have a major impact on production in the IT sector. Compared to other sectors, the IT sector has more than 40 per cent women employees of whom about 60 per cent are semi-skilled.
IT enabled Services have about 65 per cent women employees. Also, 90 per cent of front-end employees like call centre operators and telecallers are women. In both IT and ITeS sectors, companies provide at least six months’ training to employees after recruitment to mould them as per their requirements.
After Entry Level Training, the employees work as trainees for at least one year followed by a probationary period for another year before being made permanent.
Telangana IT Association founder president Sundeep Kumar Maktala said that most women get married before they become permanent. “Lo-sing semiskilled employees for six months will impact production at IT and ITeS firms. Small and medium units will be affected badly. As IT companies need process related skilled employees, they cannot replace women employees who are on leave with others. Fresh training is needed for the replacements,” he said.
He added that IT firms were planning to approach the Centre seeking exceptions like providing work from home packages during maternity leaves.
Ms Srilatha, a software engineer, said that compared with other sectors, IT was different. “If we are away from our projects for one month, we need to begin from scratch,” she said.
Ms S. Pallavi, another software engineer, said that big companies had buffer teams with at least 20 members. “Whenever team members go on long leaves, the management rep-laces them with buffer team members. But small and medium units may not have such facilities,” she said.
