CYA- Transcends All Barriers- Part 1

Recently the rape and murder of a call centre employee, a 24-year-old woman, by a person pretending to be the substitute driver of her company transport has sent a chill down the spine of the BPO industry in Bangalore.

While the accused has already been arrested and a confession extracted from him, the larger issue has not been resolved and it has now turned into a blame game. The issue is the safety of its citizens whether male or female.

This gruesome incident happened on a lonely road and when the Police Commissioner was asked about why these streets were not patrolled, he citing lack of manpower. It is galling to receive these kinds of answers because every night so many honest citizens are beleaguered at pubs by hordes of these policemen. The cops want all the pubs and restaurants to down the shutters by 11.30 pm and they begin herding citizens out by 11.15pm. Instead of harassing citizens, I would think their efforts would be better directed if they patrol the streets. Also does it not make better sense to have the city busy all through the night so that there are not too many lonely roads to patrol? The efforts spent to close down pubs at 11.30 pm do not seem have to have resulted in better safety in any case.

The police spokesperson had this to say about the incident “She was the lone employee being ferried to the office for duty in the odd hours.” He criticized the multinational firm for not providing adequate security to its women employees on night duty.

The BPO Company, HP Globalsoft on the other hand has refused to take onus for the lapse in security. This despite the fact, that the actual driver who was supposed to pick up the girl on that fateful night called the HP office and informed them that the victim was picked up by a substitute driver. When the girl didn’t turn up to work when she was supposed to, panic buttons should have been pressed, but nothing happened. They didn’t even suspect foul play when the husband of the victim called to locate his wife.

HP Globalsoft’s CEO Som Mittal when questioned about the incident said “This has been a most unfortunate incident. It has nothing to do with the company. It is a stray, one-off incident.” When asked about providing compensation to the victim’s family, he said, “We haven’t even gone into it. It is a one-of-its-kind case where the policy issues of the company are yet to be looked into,” and merely noted, “We do provide coverage on PF and Gratuity.” This was the reply three days after the incident. Isn’t the company liable for the security of its employees? Doesn’t an employee become the responsibility of the company as soon as s/he takes company transport to work?

Will humans ever stop covering their a** and start taking responsibility for their actions?