Tomas assures more employees for BPO firms

CEBU City will continue to improve its programs to accommodate the growing needs of the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, Mayor Tomas Osmeña said yesterday.

“We’re putting programs to make Cebu City the number one host of call centers in the world. We’re now number seven. Our target is to hit the 200,000 mark by the end of the year. Our problem is we don’t have enough qualified (applicants),” he told reporters yesterday.

The mayor said this a day after businessman Donald Trump was elected US president, a development that worried Cebu City–based BPO firms that recalled Trump’s pledge to return jobs to Americans.

Osmeña said the city will prioritize more college scholarship programs in the coming months so they can be qualified for employment in the BPO sector.

With his plans to take back the lots in the South Road Properties (SRP) that were sold by the previous administration last year, Osmeña said the proceeds can fund more scholarship programs in the future.

The mayor will be holding a dialogue with BPO stakeholders today. “We want to assure them that we’ll defend them. We’ll take care of them. We’ll help their employees,” he said.

Osmeña said the city will also provide transportation to BPO employees who mostly go to work at night.

Security measures will also be put in places where there are a lot of BPO workers staying.

But Osmeña admitted he’s still worried with how the new US administration will tackle the presence of outsourcing firms outside the country especially since a lot of the present BPO companies in Cebu are serving the US markets.

“So we just hope and pray that with the new administration in the US, we’re not going to take a beating,” he said.