BPO boon from Jipsa, Asgisa

By Christelle du Toit, ITWeb senior journalist

Johannesburg, 24 Apr 2008

The business process outsourcing (BPO) industry is to receive an injection of skilled workers through the activities of the Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa) and the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for SA (Asgisa).

This is according to the latest Jipsa and Asgisa reports, released by deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka yesterday and today.

The reports state the first 1 000 BPO students to have gone through the BPO Sector Support Programme will hit the market by July. Their training is being spread through the country, with students coming from regions as disparate as Gauteng and the Eastern Cape.

"SA has a lot of opportunity in the BPO sector, specifically in financial institutions," said Alan Hirsch, chief economist within the Presidency, yesterday. "What is key to this industry is trained people."

For this reason, Jipsa initiated the Monyetla Readiness Inception Programme, which is training previously unemployed individuals.

The project is funded by the Department of Labour's National Skills Fund and comprises a 16-week course, leading to 60 credits at level two of the National Qualifications Framework.

The Umsobomvu Youth Fund is to avail grants to train another 250 unemployed young people through the Monyetla programme.

In addition to the Sector Support Programme's Monyetla project, the Business Trust (which sponsors Jipsa for the most part) and the Department of Trade and Industry have also agreed to launch a project aimed at training an additional 6 000 entry-level contact centre agents per year for the next five years.

Investment incentives

The Department of Labour's latest national skills shortage "master list" puts the shortage for call and contact centre managers alone at about 3 000, comprising just under 10% of the estimated total ICT skills shortage in the country.

Asgisa was launched at the beginning of 2006 as a top-level government initiative to drive the economic growth of the country as a whole. Jipsa followed in March 2006 and was intended to address the pressing skills shortage situation in the short- to medium-term.

Jipsa is conducting research on the scale and impact of both public and privately-funded BPO training and plans to conclude it by June. The study aims to pave the way for greater synergy between various trainers, as well as identify training gaps.

At an international level, government has also put in place a R110 million incentive scheme for investors to bring their BPO business into the country. Telkom has agreed, in principle, to provide a reduced pricing scheme for those operations that are based in rural and semi-rural areas.