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| The new EGS facility in San Nicolas, Ilocos Norte (Alaric Yanos) |
By Leilanie G. Adriano
Staff reporter
San Nicolas, Ilocos Norte—Another Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) facility was inaugurated on April 27 to house about 1,200 employees.
Strategically located at the Venvi IT Park of the Valdez Center at Barangay San Francisco, the Expert Global Solutions (EGS) occupies a stand-alone facility, with two floors.
“When we came to Ilocos, it was exploratory. We don’t know what to expect. It turned out we found a great pool of talents and the backing of the academe and local government units. We saw a great potential in Ilocos Norte,” said Rainero “Bong” Borja, President of EGS for Philippines and Australia.
Mr. Borja said clients such as a US-based health care provider, T-Mobile and Amazon have already signed up with EGS.
“We are currently recruiting and wrapping about 600 people for this site already. In effect, we have already sold about half of the site capacity and we just inaugurated today,” Mr. Borja said citing that they expect to fill in 600 employees more within the end of the year or earlier.
For her part, Ilocos Norte Governor Maria Imelda “Imee” R. Marcos said it is very exciting to see Ilocos Norte’s transformation since the opening of BPOs here.
Ms. Marcos said, “Ilocanos had travelled the world to look for jobs” but this time, the pouring in of investments in BPOs opened more job opportunities for Ilocanos. As a result, children don’t need to be orphaned but go home to those who mean to you” after work.
Over the years, the governor acknowledged the high social cost of working abroad where some families including children are greatly affected when they are separated miles away.
However, Ms. Marcos revealed they are holding a bit to welcome more BPOs here as the government have to ensure the benefit and security of workforce.
“I thought Ilocos Norte will not be huge center of BPO like Cebu. We don’t have those kinds of numbers. So, I though let’s hold out for the best employers. Some of the BPOs had records of not treating their employees very well or paying very poorly and not on time and all sorts of working conditions that I didn’t like. So, I’m very pleased we have EGS and Accenture as among the best employers in the business,” she added.
Aside from the new facility, EGS also maintains an annex at the Ilocos Norte Centennial Arena which opened two years ago.
With approximately $1.5 billion annual revenue, EGS is an award-winning market leader both in customer relationship and financial care business.