Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and people from the industry on Sunday expressed concerns over the CPI-M-backed Citu’s plan to form trade unions and enter the IT sector.

Chandy said that he is surprised that a responsible trade union such as the Centre of Indian Trade Unions is going this route.

He said this move comes at a time when the IT industry is poised to make major strides in the state as the Smart City in Kochi, the Techno City project and the recently cleared Rs12-billion IT project by the US-based Taurus are all under various stages of development and around 100,000 new jobs are likely to be generated in the coming years.

Chandy said: “I don’t think that there’s any major issue with regard to salaries, but when it comes to timings, yes, there could be problems. But then that is the feature of the IT industry. When India sleeps, the US is awake and companies catering to the clients there have to work. But, then, is it not the case everywhere?”

Senior Citu leader and former CPI-M member of the Rajya Sabha, K. Chandran Pillai, after a meeting on Saturday, said the time has now come for trade unions to be formed in the IT industry.

“There have been demands for it and hence we discussed it. There have been reports of exploitation of employees in this sector,” said Pillai while taking part in a TV debate.

The IT sector is currently based in Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram and the industry, which early this year crossed Rs50 billion export turnover, employs more than a 100,000 people directly and another 300,000 indirectly.

V.K. Mathews, chairman, Nasscom Kerala Regional Council and executive chairman, IBS Group, said that the age-old theory of Kerala being unsafe for investments due to its “labour issues” continues to trouble them and now this announcement about the formation of trade unions will only do more damage.

“This is an industry where the education levels of those employed are high. So everyone knows their rights and also rules and regulations regarding service conditions, so where’s the question of exploitation?” said Mathews, whose IBS was one of the first companies to open in the Technopark campus in the mid-nineties.

State Planning Board member and the first CEO of Technopark G. Vijaya Raghavan asked trade union leaders such as Pillai and others to find out from major IT centres like Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad if trade unions exist there.