A new breed of “call centre Romeos,” seducing women as they work long night shifts together, has been identified as the latest threat in India’s battle against the spread of AIDS.
In recent years, telephone call centres have emerged as a symbol of the new, modernized India.
Educated, English-speaking young people earn salaries unimaginable to their parents as they deal with customers and clients on the other side of the world. Equally unimaginable to the older generation are the opportunities for casual sex afforded by working overnight in the cramped conditions of many call centres.
But for all their schooling and seemingly modern ways, many of these young people have little education about the danger of AIDS and the way the HIV virus is spread, experts say.
“Men and women are entering the workplace for the first time,” said Suniti Solomon, who runs an AIDS clinic in the southern city of Chennai, according to a report in The Independent.
“Often they are coming from outside the urban areas. They are getting a good salary, it’s a nice atmosphere. They are away from their parents and have more freedom.”
Solomon, who detected India’s first AIDS case in 1986, added, “Ten years ago, we had no call centres. The high-risk groups were truckers and sex workers, so we targeted these groups and the rates of condom use went up. Now the face of AIDS is changing, and the risk groups are changing.”
The UN estimates that up to 2.5 million people in India are infected with HIV or have AIDS. It is unknown how many of the country’s estimated 1.3 million call centre workers are infected, but anecdotal evidence suggests that increasing numbers are leaving themselves open to infection.
Solomon said three or four call centre workers visited her clinic every week to be tested for HIV, because they were concerned after having unprotected sex.
In some cities, condom machines are to be installed in call centres, alongside the machines for coffee and snacks.
AIDS prevention campaigners in Mumbai are to put condom dispensers in more than 3,000 locations over the coming months, including call centres.