BENGALURU: Transact Global BPO Services India, the private company in charge of the BBMP Sahaya control room, has justified termination of services of its employees, saying that it could not afford absenteeism at a time when people were calling their emergency helpline. Transact officials were reacting to TNIE’s story ‘Company managing BBMP Sahaya control room sacks 11 employees’.
On August 16, TNIE had reported that after two people tested positive in the control room, the remaining nine employees had sought a few days to quarantine at home, but were allegedly denied leave. When they did take leave, their services were terminated, the employees complained. At the time of publishing the article, Darshan Chinappa, founder-director of Transact Global, said that he was not aware of the issue.
In a statement, Subramanian S, VP-Operations, Transact Global, said only one person had tested positive and no other Covid cases were reported. “Around 10 people on a particular shift decided not to come to work, demanding work from home duty, a day after the lockdown was announced. They were paranoid/lazy to work. In case they had Covid, they could have produced the positive certificate - which they did not do. They just stopped coming and did not respond to calls or inform the office or anything that complies with the employment contract. We waited for their return for over a week besides several attempts to call them and motivate them to come back,” Subramanian said.
The HR team, according to him, maintained contact with the people and termination letters for absconding from work were triggered almost a week after they stopped responding. Justifying their service termination, the company added that at a critical time when people called the helpline for bed booking, ambulances, doctors, vaccination, they coulnot afford absenteeism.