THE EDITOR, Sir:
I WRITE this to help to dispel the usage of a certain term by the Minister of Technology, Phillip Paulwell, in an article on Sunday, November 16, 2003, entitled: 'Proposal before US Congress could hurt local IT sector'. In this article, it was stated that there was a proposal before the United States Congress that would force US companies to indicate where call centres are located. The minister stated that such a trend would be inimical to the growth of the local information technology (IT) sector in Jamaica, namely the off-shore call centres located in Jamaica.
I do not know who fooled Minister Paulwell that call centres are an IT-based industry. Paulwell has been making these nonsensical remarks since around 1998 and none of his advisors has made it clear to him that Call Centre Operators are not IT-intensive-based jobs. If the average call centre employs 100 people, only five of them really and truly perform IT-based jobs. These five individuals may fall in the category of MIS-LAN Administrators, Network Administrators, Database Administrators, PC repair technicians, IT Managers and Application Programmers.
A few years ago, Minister Paulwell helped to set up the CIT (Caribbean Institute of Technology). This was an intensive crash course to train mostly Application/Development Programmers for the expectant boom of IT jobs that Minister Paulwell promised to the Jamaican youth. I can assure you that many of the people who did that programme have not been placed by the Government as yet (after three years), they have all been left to fend for themselves and the few that were placed were reduced to Call Centre Operators, despite being trained to deal with IT-related issues. This holds true for many college graduates with degrees, associate degrees, diplomas, etc., who had expected to be a part of that growing industry.
Bothering Americans during their dinner time to buy phone services and credit cards can never be perceived as Information Technology.
I am, etc.,
MARCUS C. ABRAHAM SELYAH
IT-trained individual
selyah01@yahoo.com
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
