UNION bosses fear plans unveiled by BT to create two call centres in India could lead to thousands of North-East job cuts.

The telecoms company yesterday confirmed it was building two contact centres in Bangalore and New Delhi.

They will initially handle parts of the company's directories work - part of which is done at present at BT's site in Sunderland.

It is expected that the sites will employ 500 people by the end of the month, rising to about 2,200 by March next year.

Brian Cassidy, regional secretary of the Communication Workers Union, said: "I am absolutely horrified. I do not know how BT can call itself British."

John Woodhouse, CWU branch secretary in Newcastle, said: "We have got real fears about this - it could lead to a snowball effect.

"If BT starts transferring work abroad, everyone else in the communications industry will follow.

"It will have much wider implications for call centres and there are a lot of them in this region.

"These centres were set up in the North-East to help revive the region's economy and now they are all under threat."

Besides BT, other major call centre employers in the region include Orange - which has 2,000 staff in Darlington alone - Barclays Bank in Doxford Park, Sunderland and Garlands, which employs 1,500 staff in Hartlepool and Middlesbrough.

BT maintained yesterday that there will be no redundancies in the region.

It unveiled an £8m investment in new software for its 31 call centres across the UK, including those in Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough.

Out of the 2,200 Indian jobs, about 700 will be in directories work. The firm said these would be achieved through "natural wastage" among UK agency workers.

It comes less than a year after BT announced it was streamlining its call centre operations, a move that led to hundreds of job losses in the region.

Pierre Danon, chief executive of BT Retail, said the move abroad was to make the company more competitive and to try to recover some of the 40 per cent market share it has lost in countries such as Ireland and Germany.

"We do not aim to cut jobs in the UK only to recreate them in India," he said.

"By trimming our costs we can remain very competitive on price and also protect the long-term jobs of BT Directory operators in the UK."

The company is still considering moving other parts of its business to the Indian contact centres