DTI to assist BPO workers with entry documentations

CEBU, Philippines - The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI-7) offers to assist newly-hired employees of business process outsourcing companies with their entry requirements.

DTI-7 regional director Asteria Caberte said the agency will be working closely with other government agencies such as Pag-IBIG Fund, Social Security System, PhilHealth, among others to held BPO workers with their documents.

Caberte said the initial plan is to schedule a government agency to serve the over 100 thousand outsourcing employees and the newly-hired and are still in the process of working on their documents.

The DTI director however said that she still has to present this proposal to the different government agencies. This is one way of helping the workers to not waste time queuing  up in various agencies just to complete their requirements.

"We make ourselves available to call center agents," said Caberte adding that this move is part of the government’s thrust to make an enabling environment for Cebu.

In the Philippines, the IT-BPO sector is hitting a little over one million employment generation mark, and generated US$18.9 billion revenue as of 2014.

The industry targets to close 2015 with US$21.8 billion revenue, a few billion-dollar more to reach the level of OFW remittance which currently stood at US$25 billion.

The Philippines' outsourcing sector is still largely dominated by voice services, accounting for 685 thousand of the total one million people employed in the sector.

Beyond call center jobs or the Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO), however is rising rapidly, now it already provided high paying jobs to close to 200 thousand Filipinos.

Back-office services, like Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO), healthcare, legal process, animation, game development, among others, are now taking remarkable growth strides. The healthcare processes alone, is expected to employ 100 thousand in the near term.  (FREEMAN)