Centrica's British Gas to furlough 3,800 employees

LONDON, April 8 (Reuters) - British Gas will furlough around 3,800 employees as the coronavirus pandemic forces the company to scale back operations, parent firm Centrica said on Wednesday.

Centrica employs 20,000 people in Britain.

"We’ve had to scale back some of our operations to focus on emergency work only and looking after our vulnerable customers," a spokeswoman said.

"In the short-term we are placing some colleagues, who we can't redeploy to emergency or vulnerable operations, into furlough to protect jobs and our business. They will receive 100% of their regular salary," she said. (Reporting by Nina Chestney; editing by Jason Neely)