Wipro stalemate in Kolkata over, selected candidates backtrack

Kolkata, Dec 4 (IANS) The stalemate between information technology (IT) company Wipro and engineering students who were offered jobs as technical support engineers in the company's business process outsourcing (BPO) department in West Bengal was resolved Thursday with the selected candidates agreeing to the offer.

'We have communicated to the students on Monday through email that either they can join as BPO technical support engineers or they can wait for the project engineer jobs,' Pradeep Bahirwani, Wipro Technologies' vice president of talent acquisition told IANS from Bangalore.

'We had given them a deadline till Dec 5 to accept this offer. Around 95 percent of the students have accepted the offer till now,' Bahirwani said.

Students selected by Wipro went on a warpath a week ago when the company asked them to join as BPO employees. The students refused.

'We have accepted the offer as we don't have any other option,' Sayantan Mukherjee, a student of Bengal Institute of Technology, one of the candidates selected by Wipro for an engineering job, told IANS here.

Mukherjee asserted students have no political affiliation, and added: 'Those who don't accept the offer will have to wait till the economic downturn period is over.'

The salary of the BPO technical support engineers will remain the same as that offered to project engineers during the campus recruitment in March 2007, Bahirwani said.

Earlier, Bahirwani said in a statement: 'Every year, campus joining is spread out over the four quarters. Due to current business scenario we estimate delays in joining dates of some batches of recruits. We are providing them an option of a technical support role in our BPO division. The objective is to let engineering graduates commence work without delay.'