Tuesday, September 12, 2006

No prejudice in Cyber City call center: official

By Reynaldo G. Navales - Sun Star

CLARK ECOZONE -- A pioneering call center in the Clark Special Economic Zone (CSEZ) has eschewed discrimination in the workplace and welcomes disabled persons into its fold.

George Sorio, senior executive vice president of Cyber City, said they are giving equal opportunities to qualified disabled persons in the call center industry in a bid to level the playing field.

A number of disabled persons had already been employed in Cyber City, which has recently called for a permanent stop to the culture of pirating call center representatives (CSRs) and technology support workers.

"There is no discrimination in Cyber City," said Regina Rael, sales representative.

Rael has been with Cyber City for four years. The company encourages disabled persons like her to be positive in life and try to get a decent employment like in Cyber City.

Sorio has called on disabled persons to apply in Cyber City and become world-class sales representatives in the multimillion-dollar call center industry. Cyber City is hiring an additional 800 CSRs and technical support workers.

The Clark Investors and Locators Association (Cila) earlier supported Cyber City to put an end to the pirating of CSRs or technology support workers.

Cila president Frankie Villanueva supported Sorio, saying that the culture of pirating the limited number of CSRs and technology support workers is not helping the unemployment problem.

Sorio said the high attrition rate of 80 percent among call centers in Manila and the habit of pirating CSRs might result in the collapse of the call center industry in the Philippines.

He also said that the decline in the English proficiency of Filipino students and new graduates had also contributed to the all-time low rate of three to five percent of applicants being hired among call centers. For every 100 applicants, only three or five are being accepted.

Sorio said pirating CSRs was not helping to resolve the problem of unemployment and underemployment because it does not contribute to the hiring of new workers but instead just recycle the limited number of manpower source.

He said Cyber City, which has around 2,500 workers in Clark ecozone, is bent to provide a training program for prospective CSR applicants to make them more competitive in the global market.

No comments: