Business Process Outsourcing or BPO – it’s the fancy term for what you might know as call centers.Government says that BPO Companies are banging down the door trying to get into Belize. But, there is a shortage of trained BPO workers and so today, government signed an agreement to open a Rapid Training Institute for potential BPO Workers.The center will be at the ITVET compound, and they intend to train two thousand persons in two years. CEO Mike Singh explained at today’s press conference.

Michael Singh, CEO Ministry of Trade

“The idea is that we will transform a portion of the ITVET campus on Freetown Road into what we call the rapid training institute. The idea being that we will go out, seek at least 100 Belizeans per month, put them into the training, certify them in call centers and at the end of that training we will go through a recruitment drive with the centers so they will come in and directly interview and hire people on the spot. This is what they’re asking us to do, this was the model we used 2 years ago that was very successful, the target being that we should have at least 1000 people added to that list within a year and hopefully we get to that 2000 people within the 2 year target, which should make a fundamental difference in our employment numbers.”

The intended start date is October first and they intend to take in groups of one hundred at a time.

Design

And while the BPO is hiring, so is the Lands Department. It’s part of a new government strategy to bypass the endemic corruption with new staff and new systems.Now, it’s not like they can fire anyone we all know that in the public service that’s nearly impossible but the strategy is to implement systems that will enforce new levels of transparency and accountability.

Cabinet adopted the recommendations at its last meeting and the PM outlined them today. He was backed up by the CEO in the Ministry whop came up with them along with the Commissioner of Lands

Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister of Belize

“We will provide for the first time at last for effective service delivery. It’s going to cost government, we’re going to hire additional personnel, all who will have to be on contract because we don’t want people getting permanent appointments joining the public service and then we run into the same problem where no matter what happens you can’t get rid of them. The new hires will all be on contract with exit clauses.