Minister seeks end to outsourcing of local jobs

The Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, on Wednesday called for an end to outsourcing of local operations to foreign companies established outside the country.

Johnson said such a practice must end immediately because the local operations generated from Nigeria and outsourced were under the Business Process Outsourcing arrangement.

The minister told our correspondent that indigenous companies had the capacities and skilled work force to handle outsourcing within and outside the country.

“It is high time we changed this position and assert our feet and believe in our local companies and content, not minding the fact that many people out there may not reckon with Nigeria as a destination point for BPO,” she said.

The minister applauded the facilities and skilled labour of Communications Network Support Services Limited, a local BPO company with over 6,000 employees.

She said the CNSSL had all it took to operate outsourced services in Nigeria and still offer such outside the country, adding, “It will be out of place if local BPO companies are not given the chance to do what they are capable of doing.”

The Chief Executive Officer, CNSSL, Mr. Gbenga Adebayo, said the company had been in operation since 2007, servicing the telecoms, oil and gas, banking and finance sectors of the economy, as well as state governments, by managing some of their operations.

He said the company had call centre operations in some parts of the country that were driving the initiative, and called for government policies and regulations that would protect local BPO companies since Nigeria had no such policies in place.

“We are one of the local pioneers of BPO in Nigeria. When we started operations in 2007, most people thought we would not be able to deliver; but today, our call centre operations are so standardised that local companies now patronise us and international companies want to have a stake in it, which of course, will increase foreign direct investments and boost knowledge transfer,” Adebayo said.

[Punch]