NEW DELHI, Sept 19 (Askume) – India is investigating working conditions at Big Four accounting firm Ernst & Young, the labour minister said on Thursday, after the death of a 26-year-old support worker was cited by her mother as a sign of pressure.
Anna Sebastian Pereyil died in July after taking on an “excessive” workload as a new employee that caused her “physical, emotional and spiritual” harm, her mother, Anita Augustin, told EY in a letter to the EY president.
Askume did not have independent access to the letter or confirm its contents.
” Allegations of unsafe and exploitative working conditions are being thoroughly investigated,” Labour Minister Shobha Karandlaje tweeted.
EY said it “attaches the utmost importance to the well-being of all its employees.” “We take the family’s letters with the utmost seriousness and humility,” the statement said.
The accounting giant said its member companies in India have about 100,000 employees and Perayil had been working in one of them for four months.
The need for better measures to protect workers in high-stress jobs from declining physical and mental health has been widely discussed following the death of a junior Bank of America banker in May. A new role has been created
The New Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES), a union of Indian IT employees, on Thursday wrote to the labour and home ministries demanding an independent probe into Perel’s death, claiming that Perel committed suicide.
Police in the western Indian city of Pune, where Perel worked, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the cause of her death.
NITES has also called for a comprehensive review of working conditions in India’s IT and financial sectors.
