Another US-based call center is eyeing Bacolod City as a possible site, Bacolod Councilor Jocelle Batapa-Sigue said Friday.

Batapa-Sigue said the call center is interested to locate to Bacolod City although its representatives do not want to reveal yet the name of their company. She said last Friday, the group visited some of the schools and did random interviews with college students.

Batapa-Sigue said the group was impressed and for them it was something that made a difference in their decision. They said our students were quite shy but they were good in English, she said. "Although we have nice buildings and sites, their concern was our fluency in English," she added.

Hopefully, if ever they will be coming in, since they are looking at our city and another city in Mindanao, it will be within this year, Batapa-Sigue said.

She also said "one of the things the Bacolod City IT Focus Team presented to this locator is that Region VI, as a region, is comparable to Region 7 where Cebu and Dumaguete in terms of number of graduates, and almost comparable in terms of number of enrollment."

Batapa-Sigue said Bacolod is competitive in its IT related courses that is why the members of the IT Team advised the locator to choose Bacolod as its site.

Meanwhile, Batapa-Sigue said that last week, right after the media announced that the Bacolod IT Focus Team is accepting pre-screening forms or resumes for purposes of data banking, her office has been receiving an average of 200 resumes a day.

She said there was group of Negrenses that is doing a research on the viability of medical transcription that met with her Friday afternoon.

Batapa-Sigue said there is already a law on medical transcription in the US and whether hospitals and clinics like it or not, they have to outsource for these services. She believes there will be a very big demand for medical transcriptionists not only in Bacolod but even in Manila but the question is, whether we can supply the demand, she said.

The Negrense group said the job requires someone who is able to type 250 lines per day, has good English skills, wide vocabulary, good grammar and good listening skills, Batapa-Sigue said. She said she is appealing to all schools in Bacolod and Negros Occidental to intensify the usage of English.

"In the next several years, the demand for medical transcriptionists will bloat and we want to get a number of seats for Bacolod," Batapa-Sigue said.*CGS

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