Indian Railways BPO employees cry foul

Mon, Mar 24 01:05 AM

The Indian Railways has been a success story -- but its BPO arm seems to have gone off track. Employees at the Integrated Train Enquiry Services (ITES) of the Indian Railways -- the centres that take your call when you want to know details on train timings, reservations and payment procedures -- complain they have bad working conditions, excessive supervision and that there's lack of transparency during recruitment, according to the initial findings of an ongoing two-month survey on the BPO sector in India.

The survey is being conducted by the Forum for Call Cantre's Justice, a labour relations NGO, which is tracking the entire BPO sector in India; the ITES is the first case study. The ITES is handled by Bharat BPO, a joint venture between Omnia BPO Services Limited and Spanco Telesystems Limited (Omnia is the service provider and Spanco, the technology partner).

It is based in Noida. "Last year, I joined Bharat BPO which also has other processes including Indian Airlines," says an agent (entry-level staff) on conditions of anonymity.

She alleges a severe lack of transparency in recruitment procedures. "We were told about the ownership of the organisation six months after joining," she says.

"There is excessive supervision," grumbles a Meerut boy who left a Rs 18,000 job in Pune because he wanted to be closer home. "A 30-minute break (one of 10 minutes and the other of 20 minutes) for the entire work-day is inhuman.

If we leave the office premises for a break, we have to obtain a gate pass after getting permission from the Assistant Manager and the team leader in writing. This eats into 1-2 minutes of our 30-minute break," he adds.

Ila Gupta, senior VP, HR, Omnia, says that an Access Control System has been deployed to monitor work timings of employees. "In addition, each employees' log in time is monitored on real-time basis through log in reports.

Typically, an employee can avail of 30 minutes lunch break and two refreshment breaks of 15 minutes each." Bonds between colleagues are also not encouraged in this sector.

"When friendships form, we are shuffled to different floors or different teams," says an employee. The current AHT (average handling time) is 90 seconds.

But software improvement is a must. "Very often the IVRS (Interactive Voice Response system) fails but the flow of the calls doesn't stop," says an employee.

RECOMMEND THIS STORY