Five more building owners in Bacolod City are applying for accreditation from the Philippine Economic Zone Authority to declare their respective buildings as Information Technology centers, Councilor Jocelle Batapa-Sigue, chairman of the Bacolod IT Team, said.

So far, three buildings in the city, including the Robinsons Metro along Araneta St. and the Bacolod Convention Center, have been declared as IT centers and will be home to call centers.

Seeking accreditation are the St. Francis Center, Lopue's East, Lopue's San Sebastian, De la Rama Center and Doña Ceferina Building I.

Bacolod continues to attract IT locators because it can provide what these investors require in a particular IT hub. These include real estate, infrastructure and human resources, Batapa-Sigue said. Required under infrastructure are the presence of telecommunications companies and fiber optics system.

She said hiring of call center agents in the city has a higher turnout of 10 percent, compared to Metro Manila that has only two to three percent. This means that for every 100 applicants, 10 are hired immediately.

In Bacolod, there are now four training centers for call center agents. Among these are the VMA Global College, Lasaltech and the Manila Times Language Institute.

Batapa also said that not only call center agents are in demand but also other workers for Business Process Outsourcing companies such as accountants, data encoders, and software developers.

This year, Bacolod is opening its doors to three call centers, including I/O Asia, Teleperformance and Focus Communications.*NLG

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