There are no proper guidelines, code of conduct or grievance redressal mechanism for employees
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HYDERABAD: IT and IT-enabled services (ITeS) come under the organised sector, but problems are aplenty for the employees as they cannot approach the Labour Commission for the redressal of grievances and complaints often fall on deaf ears. Small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) in the sector offer salaries as low as Rs 5,000 a month to fresh graduates. There are no proper guidelines, code of conduct or grievance redressal mechanism for employees.
In many of these companies, irregular payment of salaries and flaws in the provident fund system are common. Recently, at an IT company here, that employs around 300 people has gone to the extent of locking up an employee when he resigned the job to go abroad looking for better opportunities. It was simply that the company did not want him to leave.
Another issue is that several IT and ITeS companies take original certificates of Class X, Intermediate and graduation from recruits at the time of joining. If any of them decides to leave before the contract period is over, the company holds the documents as ransom until the employee pays by way of damages. P. Subash, an advocate at the Hyderabad high court, says, “While the company may proceed legally against such an employee in a civil court, it cannot hold back the documents unless this is specifically mentioned in the contract. It is illegal.”
An example is the medical transcription service company from Hyderabad, TransDyne. A former employee of the company said, “My certificates are with the company for more than a year. They hold certificates as ransom until employees pay for leaving the company before completion of the contract period. They do so even though there is no such mention in the contract. I left the company because it did not honour the commitment it made to me about promotion. There are many more like me. We cannot apply for jobs anywhere else because we do not have our certificates. They have demanded Rs 1 lakh from each of us to give back the certificates.”
Firms blame poor talent among staff:
Small and medium-sized IT and ITeS companies here have a grievance: poor quality of graduates and post graduates. G. Mahesh, recruitment manager at a consultancy, says, “The quality of candidates we get has gone from bad to worse in the past few years. This is mainly among aspirants looking for jobs like medical coding, SEO, digital marketing, medical transcription writing and BPOs. Unfortunately, we get many B.Tech graduates who cannot even make proper use of a search engine. There are those who do not know the basic features of MS Excel.”
“Similar is the case with MBAs or post graduates. Firms have to recruit employees who have to be trained right from scratch,” he said. Some employees at small IT and ITeS companies complain of ‘bonded labour’, as they are made to work for longer than normal working hours, as also made to sign contracts. Companies blame it all on ‘poor quality’ of candidates. Head of an IT company in Madhapur said, “We do not have much to invest, so we make the best out of what we have. If we invest on a candidate, to teach him from scratch, we want a complete return on investment and hence we make them sign bonds.”
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( Source : deccan chronicle )
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