Gurugram-based tech firm lays off nearly 100 employees

Ravi S Singh

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 8

Companies in the private sector are giving two hoots to the writ of the Union Government, which forbids them against retrenchments and other anti-worker policies during the ongoing national lockdown occasioned by COVID-19 pandemic.

The uncertainty of job retention, even in the organised sector, has made the work force in the private sector jittery, generating a miasma of negativity and depression.

Consequently, the societal sentiment has become murky and overly bearish which is more debilitating than the coronavirus.

Alleged manoeuvrings on the touchstone of coronavirus by the sharks and commercial Rambos have left the workforce in a galloping loop of helplessness and destitution.

Encapsulating the reported depression and jumpiness among legion of employees spewed by managements’ breezy and cavalier response to the Union Government’s advisory against layoffs in the country is the mood of despondency among employees of a Gurugram-based Indian multinational firm – Kellton Tech Solutions Ltd.

About 100 of them, including those at managerial positions, have been summarily retrenched. They have been peremptorily asked to tender resignation without any condition.

The company’s management was evasive when contacted on Friday regarding the retrenchments.

Anchal Sharma, a Senior Marketing Expert with the firm, who is among those retrenched, said: “The development has caused me and the other affected employees distress.”

Anchal, who hails from a middle-class family, was preparing for her marriage which was to take place after the lockdown was over.

A post-graduate in computer science, Anchal had woven her sweet dreams and plans of post-marriage life on the basis of her job.

Bikash Kumar, a resident of Faridabad, among those laid off, said he was about seven years into a job with the company. A computer graduate from Jalandhar, he was an Internet Marketing Manger.

“I have a daughter and wife to support. What will I do now during this period of lockdown?” he wondered.

The retrenched employees have made representation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Labour Minister Satosh Kumar Gangwar, among others, seeking their intervention.

The central trade unions had written a joint letter to PM Modi and the Union Labour Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar, a few days ago, asking for statutory enforceable measure with a provision to arrest those who violated the government advisory against layoffs during the pandemic.