09 February 2004 03:52
Country`s call centres seek greater govt support
ISLAMABAD, Feb 09: Pakistan's leading domestic and international call centres Monday joined hands to launch a
joint strategy to ensure greater government support and incentives to the emerging call centre industry in the country.
"We believe it is time the government did something out of the box to attract thousands of call centre jobs moving
offshore in the US and elsewhere," said Farukh Aslam, president of the Call Centre Association of Pakistan (CCAP)
in a press statement following the foundation of the association in the federal capital. About 40 leading call centres
of the country attending the preliminary session. Farukh Aslam who is also country manager of the US' Touchstone
call centre in Islamabad, said the purpose of forming the association was to improve Pakistan's image abroad with a
view to attracting thousands of US call centres jobs moving offshore. He said the call centre industry, also known as
BPO (business process outsourcing) had drawn about 70 billion dollars investment and in the US alone the number of call
centre jobs had touched around 3.5 millions. Quoting figures from Technology Marketing Corp, a company based in Norwalk
Connecticut, USA, Farukh Aslam said the US had lost 250,000 call centre jobs to India and the Philippines since 2001 and
already there were more computer engineers in Bangalore than in Silicon Valley which was thronged by Indian engineers
some time back," he said. Similarly, he said, the US and other western countries' companies seeking to cut
costs had already hired about 170,000 workers in India over the past few years for jobs such as payroll accounting,
telemarketing and customer support services and the figure was expected to reach 1.1 million by 2008 according to the
industry groups. "This is an area of competition and if we can offer Pakistan as an attraction for the US and
western companies, we can draw a sizeable share of their business over the next few years," he said. He said there
was a great need to project Pakistan's image abroad given the support structure it offered to the growth of call
centre industry. He said Tom Slone, the CEO of his company, chose Pakistan ahead of India and other countries because of
several positive factors that included the privatization of the banking and oil/gas sector, foreign exchange reserves
from one billion dollars in 2001 to almost 11.5 billion this year, overall robust growth in the GDP, Karachi Stock
Exchange outperforming all its rivals in the world and above all the support of the Pakistan government in the fight
against terrorism. "These factors speak obviously of Pakistan's potential to attract a bulk of the US call
centre jobs moving offshore, but for that to happen we need bold and innovative decisions at the policy making level and
a change in the school curricula and the method of training to ensure that more people are educated, companies are
offered better incentives and a better publicity campaign for Pakistan is developed," he said, adding "when
you read all the articles about US business looking offshore you hear about India, China, the Philippines, even Russia
but few mention Pakistan". He called for more government attention to IT education with special encouragement to
accent neutralization training in the school system to place Pakistan eminently on the call centre industry scene. He
also cited lack of public transport at night in Pakistan as a major obstacle as the call industry operated during night
hours and there were many people, especially women, who were unwilling to work due to lack of night transport. Farukh
Aslam also urged the government and particularly Ministry of Information Technology to facilitate the call centre
industry in a more aggressive manner. "We appreciate whatever is being done by the IT ministry to facilitate us,
but there is a need for the ministry to check up with other ministries and departments such as CBR to see if the
decisions aimed at facilitating call centres are implemnetd in letter and spirit," he said, referring to a recent
press statement quoting IT minister Awais Ahmad Leghari as saying that the government had allowed duty-free import of IT
equipment. "I do not contest the statement for the decision to this effect may have been taken, but there is no
such thing on the ground with CBR refusing to agree to the duty-free import of IT equipment," he said. He also
requested the IT ministry to act in close coordination and maintain a regular interaction with the industry and their
association "so that we can tell the ministry what our problems are and what needs to be done to facilitate the
industry that has the potential of generating millions of jobs to the youth". He called on the association members
to coordinate their efforts and form strength of their voice through consensus and identify industry issues, collecting
industry input to impact the regulatory bodies. He also called for building industry image in Pakistan and in global
markets through a solid action plan. The meeting discussed the vision, objectives and boundaries of organization that
would include in its scope call centers (outbound/inbound), business process outsourcing, functional markets, financial
services and software developers. The meeting agreed to promote legal activities, calling for membership termination for
unethical or illegal behavior. It also agreed on specific terms of unethical and related illegal behavior to be defined
by an ethics committee set up by the association. The forum also agreed to have a structuring committee to look after
the legal, organization structure and ethical issues. The meeting underlined key issues such as Pakistan's image
abroad, industry image locally, effective media exposure, attracting right business, quality, quantity and growth,
resource sharing and cross leveraging, share pipe to key markets, share lesson learned, bandwidth prices, technology and
joint market association. The meeting agreed to design a good training program with the help of Pakistan Software Export
Board (PSEB). It also agreed to step up efforts to bring right business in the industry. The meeting decided to launch
mass media and marketing campaigns with the help of the government to bring business in day time and organize a process
to get a license to set up a call center. Reacting to the demands of the CCAP, Federal Minister for Information
Technology Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari asserted that to project Pakistan as a preferred destination for hosting
international call centers, the government had taken a number of steps such as reduction in international bandwidth
charges, special tariffs for call centers, availability of space in software technology parks, allowing duty free import
of IT equipment and so forth. "These incentives have started to pay divid and international call centers have begun
to be set up encouraged by the positive and forward looking policies of the government," he said, adding the list
of such call centers is likely to further extend in the months ahead. He said he had also directed the Pakistan
Telecommunication Corporation Limited (PTCL) recently to provide international connectivity to call centres within a
fortnight after the submission of application. He admitted that ready availability of reliable international
connectivity had been cited to him by potential investors as a problem area for call centers mainly because of long lead
times and lack of redundancy in the backbone system. "The latter problem has been addressed through an initiative
taken by the Ministry of Information Technology under which PTCL shall provide redundant VSAT (very small aperture
terminal) based connectivity to all international call centers," he said. About the problem regarding long lead
times, he said his ministry had given instructions to PTCL to guarantee that all international connectivity requirements
for call centers are positively met within a fortnight so that potential operators desirous of launching their call
centers are not unnecessarily delayed. He promised that in the near future, the call centre operators and PTCL would
also been encouraged to sign service level agreements ensuring that reasonable quality of service was delivered by the
operators to users in line with global standards of quality. "We hope that with these measures, the international
call centers business will be encouraged further, leading to creation of new jobs and adding to the economic progress of
the country," he said.
(THROUGH ASIA PULSE)
[Pakistan Press International Information Services Limited] |
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