Australian communications giant Telstra Corp rejected yesterday newspaper claims that it is preparing to move its accounting, payroll and purchasing operations to India.
"Telstra's human resource, payroll and accounting functions are performed and managed by Telstra's own specialist teams," said Telstra spokesman Stephen Morrison. "This will continue and there is no proposal to change current arrangements."
The Australian Financial Review said it had obtained a copy of an internal Telstra e-mail which detailed plans to move "several hundred" jobs to India, including information technology (IT) positions and a large part of its accounting, payroll and purchasing systems.
The e-mail said the group's software development division would be moved from Deloitte Consulting to Telstra local Indian partner, Satyam.
"The changeover is scheduled for the end of February 2004," the newspaper quoted the e-mail as saying.
The report comes less than a month after the company refused to confirm similar reports it was moving around 450 IT jobs to India as part of its A$800 million (US$630 million) cost-cutting drive.
Treasurer Peter Costello led the criticism at the time, saying Telstra needed "a very good reason" to move jobs offshore.
Morrison said Telstra's software development and maintenance was already carried out by a number of external suppliers "and has been for some years."
"It is no secret that Satyam is one of a number of IT service providers contracted to Telstra and this business relationship has been widely reported for some time," he said.
"For Telstra to remain a successful Australian company it has to remain competitive against huge multinational companies who already source their IT services cost effectively from the global marketplace."
Telstra chief executive Ziggy Switkowski told commercial television over the weekend the company will outsource more jobs but that it had no "imminent announcements."
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