Telecommunication costs have to be reduced to sustain the Western Cape's competitive advantage in attracting outsourcing investments, says Western Cape premier Ebrahim Rasool.
He was speaking at the opening of Fusion Outsourcing Services' R35 million facility, in Cape Town, yesterday.
Rasool said the usual outsourcing competitive advantages the province and the country have, such as cultural affinity, well-educated and motivated workforce and time zone compatibility, were not necessarily enough to sustain the advantage.
"While telecommunications costs have dropped by 27% over the past two years, it is not enough. Our telecommunications prices are too high and this is probably a factor of a monopoly not willing to unbundle itself," Rasool said during a press conference.
Earlier in his public address, the premier said: "Solidarity and sympathy [to companies wanting to set up call centres in the province] are not enough. We have to get certain things right."
Rasool also said his provincial Cabinet had met with minister of communications Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri about a month ago, to discuss the matter of telecommunications pricing.
"The minister was very sympathetic to our problems," he said, but would not comment further on the subject.
The call centre industry has invested R2 billion into the Western Cape in the past four years, and 90% of that investment had come from UK companies, he said.
According to call centre industry investment organisation, Calling the Cape, employment in the sector has surged from around 11 500 jobs to around 22 000 in the past three years - making it one of the province's biggest employers, after agriculture.
Rasool said a surprising cause of stability within the local call centre labour force was that it recruited high school leavers rather than graduates, as in other countries such as India.
Alluding to the common belief that graduates generally use the call centre industry as a stepping stone in their careers, while school leavers tend to stay in the industry, he said: "Graduates are always looking for the job that should be theirs."
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