BEWARE OF COMPUTERS

(This is an article not to alarm you! but to caution you!!)

NO DOUBT, the Information Technology companies mushrooming these days in India are creating job opportunities for qualified men and women, which is a welcome measure — but at what and whose cost?

Nowadays, one stumbles upon articles cautioning about the health hazards — both mental and physical — an IT professional faces by continuously sitting before the computer and looking at its screen. To mention the most perilous of them:

1. IT employees are prone to nervous breakdown, tremor in the hand and an irritable nature, the worst of the maladies being the possibility of becoming demented due to the damage caused to brain cells.

2. Eyesight is impaired, and even blindness is not ruled out in the case of those already having defective vision.

3. Divorces are on the increase among couples if either or both are IT professionals, according to a family court advocate.

4. It is said that even a healthy person should not sit before a computer for more than four hours a day! But what is happening in these companies now? The employees are supposed to be at the beck and call of the employer round-the-clock and most of them work virtually for more than 12 hours a day. Most of them leave their homes very early in the morning (not later than 7.30 a.m.) and return very late at night (seldom before 9.30 p.m.). This means they are away from their homes for more than 12 hours a day. (In some cases the absence is more than 16 hours!)

5. No time for family
What is the purpose of leading a married life if one does not have time to spend with children who may be asleep both at the time of departure and arrival — let alone attending on them? Immediately on arrival at home, they nibble something at the odd hour and instantly go to bed dog-tired, which is an unhealthy habit. The routine continues. Even on holidays, they are liable to be summoned by the employer!

6. On discreet enquiries, it is found that most of the IT companies — if not all — are not providing radiation-filter glass to the computer screen, which may result in an impairment of eyesight of workers. Employees with perfect eyesight may be able to pull on for some years but what about those whose vision is already defective? I know a case of an IT professional who has put in four or five years of service, whose eyesight was not defective earlier, complaining about blurred vision and inability to see at all, at times.

7. In another case, an employee who was very brilliant at the time of joining an IT company, became insane in a few years and is now in an asylum causing untold grief to his wife and parents.

8. Coming to the incidence of divorce among IT professionals, it is the absence of either or both the partners from home that causes quarrels, ego clashes, either due to the bitterness in the wife whose workload is more than that of the husband or the displeasure of the husband whose wife is away from home for long hours. (Most men want to have the cake and eat it too!) The irritable nature — the outcome of nervous breakdown which develops in IT professionals due to unhealthy working conditions — causes divorces.

No doubt, IT companies pay the employees handsomely, but the work extracted from a single employee is treble that of the normal output!

It is, therefore, time that these employees formed a labour union for themselves and fight for healthy service conditions. The union should insist:

(a) that no official is required to work in the office for more than 7 hours;

(b) that no person is asked to sit before a computer for more than four hours a day. There should be a break for a few minutes every one hour — if not the half-an- hour limit prescribed by the warning articles!

(c) that every computer is provided with a radiation-filter screen;

(d) that, instead of paying a single person a very fabulous amount and causing him or her extreme health hazards, the IT companies should employ more professionals for less salaries.and

(e) that all the IT companies are brought under the purview of the existing labour laws so that the exploitation is put an end to.

The IT professionals should also remember that their craze for huge sums of money and striving hard to earn them while young would deprive them of a happy married life and cause them untold suffering, both physical and mental, in later years.