2000 jobs for locals

www.fijitimes.com - Mary Rauto

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

OVER the next three years 2000 locals will be employed by a global contact centre which would have invested $20million by its fifth year of operation.

On Sunday, Mindpearl officially took over Air Pacific's telephone reservations centre.

The call centre received its first call at 7.02am and by 10pm staff members had attended to more than 200 calls from Fiji only with services to Australia and New Zealand to start in three weeks.

Mindpearl chief executive William Pattison said the calls ranged from flight times to buying tickets.

Forty locals have been employed so far.

"Mindpearl welcomes Fiji's national and regional airline, Air Pacific and Pacific Sun, as our launch customers in Fiji," he said. "Our target is to grow this facility to accommodate 2000 jobs within the next three years. "We look forward to welcoming our callers from Australia and New Zealand with the traditional bula greeting as they make their first call to Air Pacific.

"More important, this development will relocate jobs presently in Australia and New Zealand to the Fijian shores.

"We're excited to be part of Fiji's commerce and industry development in what we believe is the next global contact centre hub."

Mr Pattison said they were looking at employing individuals with a good attitude and fluency in English.

"The actual training we will administer ourselves. We are more interested in character rather than technical skills. We cannot train the character.

"The bula smile that comes over the phone is a component we will sell, whether the call is from London or Savusavu."