The Hindu Business Line : Housing societies shutting doors on BPO employees

YEAR 2004. As the Indian information technology sector was focussing its energies to counter the growing international backlash on offshoring, resistance of an unexpected kind has been quietly building up in the domestic circles against the business processing outsourcing (BPO) sector

In what could build up into a major crisis for the industry in the long run, more and more housing societies are joining the growing list of shelter providers unwilling to provide accommodation to employees of BPO companies.

Officials of housing societies say that the major reason for shooing away the `young brigade' are security concerns and their irregular lifestyle. "All members of our cooperative society have agreed not to rent out their premises to BPO employees. Our past experience with leasing apartments to such employees has not been very pleasant," the treasurer of one of the societies in Noida, a satellite town of Delhi, said on conditions of anonymity. He also did not want his apartment block to be singled out.

"We are not the only one to take such a step. Many of the societies in our sector - Sector 62 - have taken similar decisions. Our sector is close to Sector 58 which is the BPO hub of Noida and the demand for housing from employees of these companies is very high here," the source said.

He said that housing societies were getting worried over midnight knocks and at times knocks well past that time on the society gates by vehicles packed with young people returning from office or waiting to be picked up for their duty shift. Similar problems have arisen in Mumbai, said Mr Navnit, Chief Operating Officer of Epicenter Technologies Pvt Ltd, a BPO company having operations in the city.

"I agree the combination of the fact that these BPO employees are young, single and work odd hours hurts their prospects of finding an accommodation easily. There are quite a few societies in Mumbai that are hesitant in renting out flats to BPO employees. I feel the society at large has to come to terms with the single status and the work profile of the ITES industry," he said.

Epicenter has two facilities in Mumbai and employs 1,200 professionals. "As many as 8-9 per cent of our employees come from outside Mumbai who look for rented premises. The company attracts candidates from Goa, Nashik, Nagpur, Indore and Pune," he added.

BPO companies, on their part, are making efforts to make the process of house hunting as smooth as possible for their employees. "While we attract talent from outside the city we also try to help them settle down. For instance, we have tried to overcome the problem by taking four apartments on rent for our employees, each of which can accommodate six people," he said.

A section of the industry, however, feels that with the growing awareness of the activities of these companies the problem is gradually subsiding.

"During the nascent stage of the sector, people were extremely hesitant to lease their place to BPO employees. The problem is no longer as acute as it was during the initial days of BPO sector," said Mr Debashish Das, Vice-President (HR and training) of Keane Worldzen.

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