The labour ministry is reviewing the issue of 67 employees of Thimphu TechPark’s ScanCafe, who were relieved from the service earlier this month. The decision was made following the new law approved by the European Union or EU parliament that has tightened the law on sharing personal data of EU citizens.
This means ScanCafe which specialises in digitalising and editing older formats of photography and video will be losing its European clients. The General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR will come into effect from May 25.
The GDPR is meant to protect all the EU citizens from privacy and data breaches and it applies to all companies processing personal data. The new law has left the US registered company, ScanCafe in Thimphu with excess manpower. So, from over 400 employees, the ScanCafe downsized its number of employees by 67.
“If this law is not being followed, and you are found guilty of this, then the compensation is really huge. It is like we have to pay 4 per cent of your annual income to that company,” said Jagat Adhikari, Operation Manager of ScanCafe.
ScanCafe said these 67 employees were relieved from the service based on their performances in the last eight months.
“We have given them one month notice and gave them salary of two months. We have also given them option that they don’t have to come to office. So they have to understand that these two months were notice period for them,” added the Operation Manager.
However, some of the employees who were terminated said the decision was unfair.
“The company said we were terminated based on 8 months performance data but some employees were terminated before their probation period, and again when we requested for our performances data, they refused to show it to us,” said one of the employees, who sought anonymity.
Another unnamed employee also said: “According to GDPR, European based department was affected and the company has relieved more employees from US based company which has no link with GDPR. On top of that they also kept nine employees from European based.”
But, ScanCafe said the decision was made in consultation with the labour ministry. The Chief Executive Officer of TechPark said that the incident, however, would not affect overall mechanisation of TechPark.
“It is a concern but as of now we have to say that this is not going to affect the operational continuity in Bhutan and they will be leasing the same space as they have been leasing from us till now and we are hoping that this kind of issue will not happen again,” said Tshering Cigay Dorji, CEO, Thimphu TechPark.
Meanwhile, the 67 relieved employees hope the labour ministry will help them.
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