Western Wats Cebu still operating

Contrary to reports that Western Wats Cebu operation has gradually cut down on its job volumes and shut down, Cebu Investments Promotions Center (CIPC) confirmed that the Cebu facility is still operating and in fact, is the most productive among its facilities worldwide.

Western Wats Idaho is the one that closed and not the Cebu facility, CIPC said yesterday.

Western Wats now has over 13 phone centers. The Cebu facility being the first outside North America, is the largest and fastest growing, among its network.

Located at the Mactan Export Processing Zone (2), Western Wats Cebu started its operations in 2003, one of the first few call centers that opened in the province.

In August of last year, Western Wats Philippines Inc., opened its second facility in the country in Davao City.

The Cebu phone center is a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Wats and is exclusively dedicated to survey research. The facility is also directed by executive management at its headquarter in Orem, Utah. Cebu facility currently occupies three floors and employs more than 1,500 full time employees who operate 700 interviewing stations.

CIPC managing director Joel Mari S. Yu said in an interview with The Freeman earlier that hearsays on Western Wats closing down or having massive lay-offs may not be because of the global economic crisis, but rather may be due to ownership and internal issues faced by the company.

Yu downplayed impressions that the BPO industry, especially the call center sector will be affected by the economic downturn, and may resort to massive lay-offs in the next few months, saying, "The more outsourcing jobs will be dumped in the Philippines, as America or Europe based companies are streamlining their costs of operations."

"What's the use of keeping jobs in the States? Their [companies in US/Europe] main concern now is how to stay alive," Yu said reiterating that the more call centers and other e-Services related jobs will be expected in the Cebu in the next few months, instead of seeing retrenchments from the BPO sector.

In fact, Cebu aims to host about 20 percent of the BPO investment target of the Philippines by 2010. The national government is targeting to generate a total of US$12.99 billion, from BPO software industry alone.

According to Cebu Educational Development for Information Technology (Cedfit), with Cebu's edge in this area, the province is seen to get US$255 million of this entire national target.

As of end of December 2008, record showed that there are 5,000 software developers in Cebu, while the BPO industry in the province employs 22,000 workers.