6,000 jobs to be created as Qulafon multi-building campus construction begins

Georgetown, GINA, September 4, 2013

 

Employment opportunities for 6,000 people will be created over five years when the world’s largest contact centre campus at Providence on the East Bank of Demerara is opened to provide educational, humanitarian and counselling services.

 

Qualfon, a global provider of call centre back-office and business process outsourcing services is investing in the state of the art multi-building campus that will boast a university, facilities for milk subsidies, free medical services, worksite chaplains, library exchange and caring programmes.

President Donald Ramotar speaking at the sod-turning ceremony of the Qualfon multi-building campus at Providence, East Bank Demerara in the presence of Government and Qualfon officials

 

The campus is being built obliquely adjacent to the Princess Hotel and north of the Guyana National Stadium at Providence, an area that is fast becoming a prime location for real estate and business ventures.

 

As President Donald Ramotar turned the sod to the facility officials present were grateful to the President, Ministers of Government, educational institutions and other agencies that made the dream a reality.

 

 

About US$4 will be spent in the first phase of the project according to Chief Executive Officer of Qualfon Mike Marrow who accompanied President Ramotar in the turning of the sod along with Minister of Finance Dr Ashni Singh, Site Director Mark Boyer and Qualfon Chief Occupations Officer Alejandra Romero.

An artist’s impression of the Qualfon multi-building campus to be constructed at Providence, East Bank Demerara

 

Customer services, sales, technical support and management are some of the specific fields among which the 6,000 jobs will relate to when the campus is up and running. Officials gave an average of three to four years when construction of the facility will be completed.

 

Today was regarded another of the latest acts of confidence in Guyana’s business environment which many foreign investors find attractive, and which the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) Government has been credited for creating.

 

It is happening a mere eight years after Qualfon Guyana started operations within a sector that has been given prominence.

 

 

“Information Communication Technology (ICT) is now so important in the world and it has penetrated into every single sector of the economy, every single trade… to have such a large investment in this sector is important because it puts us in a way on the cutting edge of technology,” President Ramotar said.

President Donald Ramotar joins Chief Executive Officer of Qualfon Mike Marrow and Site Director Mark Boyer to turn the sod for the Qualfon multi-building campus at Providence on the East Bank of Demerara

 

ICT is one in the list of new sectors which President Ramotar said has aided in the diversification process from an era where rice, sugar and bauxite served as the backbone of Guyana’s economy.

 

It has also augmented the programme of improving access to education, with the coming on stream of the learning channel, the laying of the fibre optic cable, One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) programme, and the proposed implementation of online courses at the University of Guyana.

 

President Ramotar regarded the thousands of jobs which the Qualfon multi-building campus promises to create as exciting news, but bemoaned the other benefits which the country has lost as a result of the stalemate on the Amaila Falls Hydropower Project (AFHP).

 

“Not only will it bring cheaper electricity to consumers but experience has shown in many other parts of the world that when you have cheap energy, you have a spurt of development in manufacturing in processing… we can genuinely turn our agriculture sector, which we are trying to diversify, to an agri  industrial sector,” President Ramotar said.

 

 

The Qualfon multi-building campus will also include a solar powered panel and green building materials, indoor/outdoor cafeteria, interfaith chapel, onsite waste water treatment facility, back-up generator, water pond and landscaping and parking with designated pick-up and drop-off areas.