The Labour Ministry is gearing to investigate the death of Anna Sebastian, a member of Ernst and Young’s audit team in Pune, who passed away on 20 July due to work stress. A letter written to the chairman of EY, by Sebastian’s mother, accusing the company’s unreasonable workload of taking her daughter’s life went viral recently. This led to a lot of backlash on social media following which EY released a condolence message.
It is pertinent to note here that before the matter received media attention, EY officials or employees had not even attended Sebastian’s funeral or responded to her parents’ efforts to contact her managers. This insensitivity on EY’s part had prompted Sebastian’s mother to send a mail to Memani to draw his attention to the work environment that is clearly taking a toll on its employees’ well-being.
Onmanorama reports that officials of the company have sought a meeting with Sebastian’s parents in Kochi, two months after Sebastian died. Meanwhile, Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Shobha Karandlaje has posted on X that “thorough investigation into the allegations of an unsafe and exploitative work environment is underway.”
Rajeev Memani, chairman, EY India, on the other hand, refuses to believe that Anna Sebastian’s death was due to work pressure. According to Jagran, Memani highlighted the fact that EY has over a lakh employees and all of them work very hard, but none had reported health issues due to this.
