BT brings jobs back from India

BT is bringing call centre jobs back to Blighty from India.

The move was revealed in an answer to a shareholder at BT's annual general meeting yesterday.

Ian Livingstone, chief executive at the telco, was asked, to huge applause, when he would close the firm's Indian call centres.

In response he said he would move about 2,000 jobs back to Blighty. The telco employs about 5,500 customer service staff in India and could eventually shift as many as 2,750, back to the UK.

They would join some 11,000 customer service staff in the UK, The Times reports.

A spokesman for BT told the paper: “This is not about customer service, as the service in our operations around the globe is of very similar standards."

Shareholders also expressed fury and incomprehension at the £2bn losses at BT's Global Services division and the big payout given to its departing boss.

BT has laid off contractor staff and made two rounds of redundancies of 15,000 people, as well as freezing wages for 100,000 staff and offering sabbaticals. ®