‘What action will EY take?’: Anna Sebastian’s father speaks to TNM

“I do not think Ernst & Young offers any support for newcomers, even though they say they do,” said Sebastian Perayil, the father of Anna Sebastian Perayil, the 26-year-old chartered accountant working from Kochi who tragically died in Pune. Anna’s father was speaking to TNM after four representatives from Ernst & Young Pune visited their home on Thursday, September 19. The visit of EY representatives, including two partners, an HR manager, and a senior manager, came two months after Anna died in Pune on July 20. It was made after a letter her mother Anita Augustine wrote to company chairman Rajiv Memani gathered national interest in the last few days. The letter alleged that it was due to the overwhelming work pressure she faced that Anna died..Speaking to TNM, Sebastian said that the company representatives told them that they will look into the matter. “But they did not say what they will look into or what action they will take,” he said. According to Sebastian, Anna had begun to experience health difficulties due to lack of sleep and food by June. When her parents went to Pune on June 6 to attend her convocation, they took her to a hospital as she complained of chest pain and other difficulties. “At the hospital, they took an ECG and kept her in observation for an hour. The ECG reading was normal. The cardiologist said that she has no heart-related problems, and that her main problem was lack of sleep. The cardiologist also said that the problems she was showing was also because of acidity and acid reflux caused by irregular food intake,” Sebastian said. At the time of her death, Anna was at the paying guest facility where she stayed. “She had talked to her mother till about 10 o'clock and then gone downstairs to collect the food she had ordered online. Her room was on the second floor. As she was climbing up, she fainted on the stairs,” he said. Other residents took her into their room, and they called Anna’s mother from her phone. “My wife told them to take her to the hospital, but then she lost consciousness again. They called for an ambulance, but they couldn’t get one, so they arranged a car and took her to the hospital. But by the time they reached the hospital, Anna was lying dead in the car’s backseat,” Sebastian recounted. According to him, multiple issues including acid reflux, work stress, work pressure contributed to the death, it was not one single reason that was the cause of her death. Sebastian said that Anna’s office had six audit teams, including hers. “What Anna faced was difficulties owed to the additional work that her manager and assistant manager assigned to her,” he said. “Neither her manager nor her assistant manager would give her any support. Instead, they would make fresh joinees like her do all the work. The assistant manager would often force additional work on her after hours at night, demanding that it be done in short notice. Once or twice, when Anna pointed out some inconvenience, the AM asked her, ‘Why can’t you work at night?’ Anna was unable to sleep on most days and couldn’t eat on time. After a whole night of work, she would have to wake up at 7.30 the next morning and repeat the same cycle,” Sebastian said. “Anna’s manager would hold review meetings every seven days. The manager, who is said to be a cricket enthusiast, once rescheduled a review meeting three to four times as per the timings of a T-20 cricket match. He would assign work at his convenience and ask for it to be done immediately,” he added. “The last time she came home to Ernakulam was for her close friend’s engagement in June. She had to return the same night because of the workload, saying work would be pending if she didn’t go,” he said. In an email to EY employees, chairman Rajiv Memani had mentioned avenues for employees to reach out to the management in case of any issues. Sebastian said that the EY representatives who visited them also said that the company had a forum for employees to raise complaints. “They said that all new employees are made aware of it during the orientation programme given to them. Anna had never told us about any such fora. If she had, we would have told her to raise her issues there. We don’t know if she was unaware of it, or whether she was worried about the repercussions of a junior like her raising a complaint,” he said. Her father told us that Anna had aspirations of working with some NGO after working in a company for a while. “That was what she wanted to do. Even when she was a student, she would take tuitions for students at an orphanage,” he said.