An Indian woman has revealed how the British car insurance industry has turned her into a shopaholic.
24-year-old Eva Dahun Thabam is a call-centre operative for motor insurance provider Norwich Union, and lives and works in the city of Pune in western India. Although she has never set foot in the UK, she answers up to 40 calls a day from customers, and often works long into the night in order to keep aligned with Greenwich Mean Time.
The car insurance firm pay her 13,000 rupees (£170) a month, three times the average salary of a new Indian graduate, and after paying her rent she has enough cash left over to spend on clothes and going out with her friends. “I’m a shopaholic,” she giggled to a reporter from The Times.
Eva's lifetime ambition was to live independently of her family and she's now achieved her goal, sharing a flat with two other friends who also work in call centres. Her parents and siblings live thousands of miles away on the other side of the country, and Eva's salary has increased fivefold since she left her last job working for a television station in her hometown.
Ms Thabam admits that she deals with a lot of angry and abusive customers every day, but is grateful to the British car insurance company for giving her, and thousands like her, the opportunity to make a decent living.
A spokesperson from CoverGirl Car Insurance Services, specialists in women's car insurance, said, "There has been much controversy in the UK in the last few years as companies move their call centres abroad in order to save money, and many Britons have lost their jobs as a result.
"We at CoverGirl, however, ensure that all our call centres are kept in the UK as we feel that this is what our customers prefer."