By Shivam Patel
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Indian authorities inspected consulting firm Ernst & Young’s (EY) Pune office and interviewed executives in the western city on Monday, a state official said, amid an investigation into an associate worker’s death, which her mother blamed on stress.
EY faces scrutiny in India over the death of 26-year-old Anna Sebastian Perayil which has sparked a social media uproar and pushed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to order a probe into allegations of a “backbreaking” workload.
Federal and state labour officials have sought a response in seven days from EY to queries including events surrounding Perayil’s death in July, the company’s employee welfare policies and its licenses to operate in Pune, the official told Reuters.
EY did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It said last week that it placed “the highest importance on the well-being of all employees” and was “taking the family’s correspondence with the utmost seriousness and humility”.
“We have conducted an inspection and spoke to people in their office. There are many things on which we have sought the firm’s response,” said Shailendra Pol, additional labour commissioner of the Maharashtra state government.
“We have to find out what has happened in this case,” Pol said in a telephone interview.
Perayil’s case has surfaced in the past few days after a letter her mother wrote to EY India’s chairman, which said the company’s work environment had placed strain on her daughter, began drawing attention on social media.
India’s Federal Labour Minister Shobha Karandlaje said on Sept. 19 that a “thorough investigation into the allegations of an unsafe and exploitative work environment is underway”.
(Reporting by Shivam Patel in New Delhi; Editing by Alexander Smith)
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