Complaint Letter #9 about AIESEC Kolkata!

To AIESEC in India and International,

My name is C. L., MCVPX of AIESEC in Spain. I am writing to you in order to express my anger and my disappointment towards AIESEC in India. ?I want to communicate to you the things that are happening right now and have been happening in the LCs of AIESEC in India. I would also like to ask for action as my EPs and I have been met with apathy from the LC level. I don?t want you to take this e-mail as another complaint, but to realize the damage we are doing to the organization and build an action plan.

Since I assumed my role as MC we have sent 4 EPs to India and all of them have experienced the same type of problems. If corrective measures aren?t taken, I will strongly discourage exchange with India. Although this seems harsh, we are promoting an experience and I feel that sending Spanish EPs to India does not live up to the quality promoted.

I will mention all the problems that need to be changed. All of this information is supported by real cases (which are in the annex):

-?????? Quality of the TNs: Not all the TNs are challenging, as we promise the internships with AIESEC are. The worst is when TNs change the job descriptions to where the EPs end up as telemarketers. The MC is the final responsible for auditing the forms. Numbers are important, but also quality.

-?????? Airport: LC members did not pick up any of the interns in the airport, which proves to be a larger problem in India because of the language barrier (as the EPs cannot communicate with locals at all).

-?????? Accommodation: Interns are living in horrible conditions, conditions that are not compliant with the quality standards outlined by AIESEC International, and conditions that contradict any Outgoing Preparation Seminar. The houses for Interns are like refugees camps, more than eight interns are living in two bedroom houses, and they need to pay the same amount of money if they sleep in a room or in the middle of the kitchen. Both my EPs and my outrage grew when we discovered that the LCs are making a profit of this situation, earning 200 to 300 Euros per month.

-?????? AIESEC Experience: the point of doing an Internship with AIESEC and not with any other organization or university is to live the complete experience. ?I am very doubtful if the interns are leaving a life changing AIESEC experience especially when the interns have little to no contact with the LC members ? only seeing them once a month when they are there to collect the rent.

This is not meant to smear the name of AIESEC or AIESEC in India, but rather a call for action. The blatant disregard for quality from some of the LCs and LC members is seriously hindering the quality of the experience for 4 of our EPs. I really hope that you can get back with us with some sort of plan of action in order to control this situation and increase the quality of internships in you country. We are only asking that the AIESECers act like AIESECers.

Attached you will find all the testimonies of the Interns. Some of them are in Spanish, but I know that AI has people that can help to read them all. As well, the English ones are sufficient for AIESEC India to see the problems and hopefully do something about it???

These are the TNs and the LCs where the Interns are experiencing problems:

TN-In-IN-CA-2009-2193 - AIESEC KOLKATA

TN-In-IN-CA-2009-2197 - AIESEC KOLKATA

Regards

C.L.

MCVPX '09-'10

AIESEC in Spain