BACOLOD CITY — The safety and welfare of call center employees in their workplaces will be a priority agenda in the 2018 planning of the Bacolod-Negros Federation for Information and Communication Technology (BNEFIT).
It will be one of the important agenda for the organization’s planning for 2018, said lawyer Jocelle Batapa-Sigue, executive director of BNEFIT, in response to the incident in Davao City where 37 call center agents died in a fire inside a mall which hosts their business process outsourcing (BPO) company.
Batapa-Sigue, a trustee of the National ICT Confederation of the Philippines, said that malls offering spaces to BPO locators must understand the nature of the call center business.
They should always take measures to protect the lives and welfare of the workers, she added.
BPO facilities should employ the highest degree of safety and emergency measures to prevent loss of lives, she further said.
In Negros Occidental, especially Bacolod, Batapa-Sigue said she is confident that BPO companies are implementing safety measures.
She said that 80 percent of the BPO companies operating here are accredited by the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) which initiates regular annual and periodic inspections to maintain facility standards.
Regular fire drills and emergency and evacuation measures are conducted, she added.
Batapa-Sigue said she has high confidence in the standards enforced by the PEZA, Bureau of Fire Protection, and the local government units.
Bacolod hosts large-scale call center firms such as Convergys, Teleperformance, Teletech, and PanAsiatic solutions. Each company employs thousands of contact center workers.