Saturday, July 16 2005 11:34 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

London: In its efforts to bolster profit, British Gas, leading Energy Company, plans to cut 2,000 jobs at sites in Manchester, Oldham and Solihull in the UK and outsource 1,000 jobs to India, a company spokesman said today (July 16, 2005).

"With new billing systems, we will not need anything like the number of back office data processors," the spokesman said.

This is the company's first move to outsource work to India, but British Gas - owned by Centrica - was keen to stress that its customer service division would not be affected.

Mark Clare, managing director of British Gas said: "We have no plans to offshore our customer service call handling. British gas is wholly committed to maintaining its existing call centres in the UK.

"Over the last year, we have recruited more than 2,500 frontline staff and continue to hire customer service advisers, field sales agents and service engineers."

The work affected by today's announcement involves the processing of bills, meter readings and other information.

In a statement, the energy company, employing about 26,000 workers across the UK, said a number of data processing and administrative jobs are likely to become redundant as it switches to a more streamlined customer billing system at a cost of 430 million pounds.

Job losses are likely this year, the company said, adding that it was still in consultations with unions.