Fired techies on verge of turning bank defaulters in Hyderabad

IT body demands EMI holiday for retrenched IT professionals
Fired techies on verge of turning bank defaulters in Hyderabad

HYDERABAD: Several IT firms have fired hundreds of its employees in the name of “restructuring” and “automation.” Now, most of those techies are on the verge of becoming bank defaulters. Many of them say they are being crushed under the weight of mounting credit and debts after their unanticipated loss of job.  
“The recovery agents even went to my native village and asked my friends about my whereabouts,” says a techie who lost his job with Tech Mahindra following a downsizing drive last year.

“I owe them about `2 lakh.” He says he had an annual package of Rs 6.5 lakh and was paying a monthly EMI of Rs 28,000 to banks. “As I could not bear the embarrassment of having to evade banks, I paid back the debt by taking hand loans from friends. “

Most of them who lost their jobs were mid-level professionals with over eight years of experience. The immediate impact was on the credit history of these people. A credit restoration consultant observed that CIBIL score, a common benchmark checked by banks to grant loans, gets affected as loan dues pile up. This makes them ineligible to procure further loans from banks.  

“About 90 per cent of techies who come to me have accumulated a poor CIBIL history,” said M Rajendranath, CEO of Emerald credit services. “The CIBIL score reduces by 5 points every month if loan payments are overdue. Eventually, a poor score would be cited by banks as a reason for further loans not being granted,” he said. An error of even Rs 50 written off against a person’s name makes them defaulters, he added.

Meanwhile, IT welfare organisations which hold counselling sessions for the techies who lost jobs observed that an EMI holiday should be given to terminated techies. “They are not willful defaulters; nor are they going to run away. A crisis has arisen and giving EMI holidays until they get back their jobs will be like first-aid given to them,” said Kiran Chandra, a member.

Techie starts social media campaign

Ravi Dharmavarapu, a techie who was fired recently, took to social media to campaign about his ‘illegal termination’. He reached out to several celebrities and politicians like Allu Arjun, Kavitha Kalvakuntla, K Chandrasekhar Rao, KT Rama Rao, Mahesh Kathi, Arun Jaitley, Nara Lokesh and T Harish Rao. In a series of tweets, he alleged that the government was not paying attention to illegal terminations that have been going on for six months now. He said he was struggling to meet his financial needs and has a pregnant wife. He is one of the several techies who filed a writ petition against their termination with HC.

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