INDIA — Two weeks ago, TOC reported that Accenture India, one of the leading IT services providers in India, uncovered a scam in which applicants for jobs at the company utilised falsified credentials and experience letters.
Accenture India was forced to fire thousands of them from the company (‘Accenture India fires thousands of staff caught with falsified credentials and experience letters‘, 14 Nov 2022).
In response to media queries, Accenture India said, “We have discovered an effort to use documentation and experience letters from fraudulent companies to obtain offers of employment from Accenture in India… We have exited people who we confirmed took advantage of this scheme.”
On its website, Accenture India also put up an advisory, “Please note that we have not authorised any agency, company or individual to collect money or request any monetary arrangement in order to receive a job at Accenture… we do not charge a fee at any stage of our recruitment process.”
“Legally, we are not obliged to honour any job assurances made by third parties in exchange for money,” it added but did not say if Accenture India had honoured job assurances made by third parties in the past.
TOC also reported that following the dismissals at Accenture India, Cognizant India revealed that they had a 6 per cent “involuntary attrition” in the quarter that ended September.
The high involuntary attrition was due to “failed background checks”. Involuntary attrition can be assumed to be a euphemism for sacking.
Indian graduates caught with fake credentials are nothing new. A simple google search would show that such incidents occurred in India every day. A news report from the Afternoon Voice, a Mumbai daily, reported last December that fake degree cases are on the rise in India.
It quoted a pharmacist saying, “More than half of the medical store owners and workers in India have a fake Bachelors of Pharmacy degree. It is common practice in India to ‘rent’ your B.Pharm certificate to medical store owners if you are pursuing M.Pharm.”
“You can make enough money to pay your living expenses while pursuing M.Pharm that way. Getting a fake degree, one which you can put on a public display without fear of getting caught, in India is as easy as paying USD 200 if you know the right source,” the pharmacist added.
TOC Contacts Cognizant
Following the report that Accenture and Cognizant in India are letting go of their staff with falsified credentials and experience letters, many Singaporean netizens wondered if some of these people with shady credentials might be transferred to their Singapore branches and worked in Singapore instead.
After all, under the India-Singapore Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA), intra-corporate transferees can be transferred from one country to another and work in that country for up to as long as 8 years.
TOC then sent an email last Tuesday (22 Nov 2022) to Cognizant with the subject matter, “Media query: Manpower relocation between Cognizant India and Cognizant Singapore”. TOC asked Cognizant specifically about those employees affected by its recent “involuntary attrition”:
1) Has any employees from Cognizant India been transferred over to Cognizant Singapore before or after the mass involuntary attrition?
2) Has any employees from Cognizant Singapore been affected by the same issues faced by Cognizant India?
We would appreciate it if Cognizant can respond to our queries on the above questions.
So far, there has not been any response from Cognizant after 1 week of sending the above queries.
Separately, TOC from its own sources was able to determine that Cognizant has been transferring staff from India to Singapore to work even as recently as just this year.
Indian engineers were transferred to Singapore to work on projects which Cognizant has secured from clients in Singapore.
It’s not known if the Manpower Ministry of Singapore does any credential checks or how well they are doing it for work pass applications from India.
