Murder of BPO Worker

This news perhaps was the most shocking one in the recent times among all the happenings. This news together with the hoax call over parliament bomb blast totally covered the major news events on Saturday. But the murder of the BPO worker raised again a question on the security provided by the companies to its night staff in India.

This unfortunate incident happened with a woman employee of the HP Global Contact Center in Bangalore. Prior to this event everything was pretty smooth for this industry where in the work begins when everyone decides to sleep. Timings like 2 AM in the morning are quite usual in this kind of job but the 2 AM of friday turned out to be the last hour for Prathibha belonging to Bangalore.

Pratibha was raped and murdered by the driver of call center which had employed her. The driver it seems had demanded Pratibha to withdraw money from the ATM but Pratibha had declined to do so. Seeing his demand not getting fulfilled he took the cab on a isolated route and then raped Pratibha and finally slit her throat before dumping the body in a pit near Anjanapura Layout. This is a heinous act of crime one can think of. The family members especially the husband of Prathibha who himself works in another BPO was shocked and went into depression after the news of the incident.

This rape and murder of a 28-year-old city woman BPO worker has actually nicked off the "security feel" that existed among the agents community, especially among women employees and their parents. BPO firms say though they have outsourced their logistics requirements to external players, it’s strictly monitored and carefully tabbed to ensure safety.

This incident comes as a major blow to the BPO players in India since this reduces the confidence of employee on employer tremendously in providing good security measures to him/her. Also since most of the BPOs work in night shifts it becomes tough for the companies to shift the women associates into the morning shifts which are very little in number and considering the fact that close to 50 % of the associates consists of women.

Well as BPO centers puts it " We also have to outsouce certain services. Logistics is not our core business and we cannot carry out efficiently without losing focus on the core business". But this incident is an eye opener for all the BPO companies in India. Its better late than never.