Amended telecommunications bill paves way for more youth jobs
DPI, Guyana, Thursday, May 16, 2019
Young people can expect more jobs to be coming their way in the near future as the amended Interception of Communications (Amendment) Bill 2019 was passed in the National Assembly on Wednesday.
The bill, which opens up the market for more call centers to be established here. Minister of Public Telecommunication Catherine Hughes, told the National Assembly that, “the call center industry is emerging and rapidly growing not only in the world, but in Guyana.”
Minister of Public Telecommunications, Catherine Hughes at the 114th sitting of the National Assembly, of the 11th Parliament.
Minister Hughes stated “the call center business provides employment, not only to young people but to a range of individuals across ages, across sectors and therefore as a country we see this as an industry that can provide much needed job to our citizens.”
She explained that as part of their quality assurance system, “commercial call centers requires that the client and the provider must record conversations.”
According to Minister Hughes, “one of the gaps for most of the international clients that have expressed an interest in investing in Guyana is the recognition that the primary act does not allow for the recording of conversations.”
She deemed the passage of the amendments as creating a “herculean leap in confidence” for call centre operators.
The Telecommunications Minister told the House that Guyana has a unique advantage when it comes to the expansion of services in this area.
“First of all, we are primely located in the time zone that is very similar to our north American counter parts and therefor the ease of doing business in the same time zone gives us a very strong competitive advantage…we have a clear distinct English accent which is a plus in the call center industry.”
Over 5000 persons are employed by call centres. Qualfon and Teleperformance are two of the more popular call centres operating here.
Anara Khan.
Image: Marceano Narine.