Email

Print

Orson Picart, Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist, Peak Outsourcing
"We reached out to the mayor being that he is a very progressive mayor and he's into these sorts of collaborations and once he said yes it was a go, all we did was to pen the MOU, we had an official meeting before penning the MOU, making sure that we had visibility across the entire MOU and the different mechanisms in place to make sure we can offer gainful employment, training and different aspects that newbies and possibly people who are in the BPO sector would actually need in terms of competencies."

Courtney Menzies:
"What will the agreement look like from the City Council's part?"

Orson Picart, Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist, Peak Outsourcing
"That's a very good question, what I can share, so mostly it's to provide a funnel to Peak Outsourcing and it's not only a recruitment tool, it also has to do with the other community based intiatives that we're actually partnering on that once again we can build the competencies of qualified individuals to make sure that they have placement. Where there are different social projects, we definitely want to be a part of those, the different initiatives that the Belize City Council has in place, we are going to partner with them to see how best we can lend resources and collaborate to make the events a little bit more bigger and they have to be community based because obviously Belize City we have over 60,000 individuals if I'm not mistaken but I stand to be corrected."

Bernard Wagner, Mayor of Belize City
"We have been the sort of entity that really wants to drive and contribute to reducing unemployment in our city. We have done it as you saw through Being Your Own Boss initiative, contributing to having people run their own business but at the same time there are some people who want to enter and seek a career and what better place than Peak Outsourcing, they have been very proactive, they have demonstrated to us that they are here for the long haul from the mere fact that you are able to establish a corporate center in the city, that says a lot of how you take this business and how you see yourself being a part of the Belize City , whole fabric of Belize City employment so we wanted to ensure that we contribute to youths coming out of high school, coming out of university every year, there's so many of them coming our of universities and this is a career opportunity and we want to be a part of it."

But while BPO's do provide more jobs, young people are now faced with the alarming possibility that it may be the only decent job they can get, no matter their field of study. So we asked the Mayor if this is indicative of a bleak outlook for those currently in school.

Courtney Menzies:
"Like you said, there's a lot of youths coming out of school, and we know job security is a huge problem, but there is that criticism that the only jobs available are call center jobs, and now here you are pushing that type of job."

Bernard Wagner, Mayor of Belize City
"Listen, the fact of the matter is that we once used to complain about employment opportunities. We have seen where unemployment has reduced to, the last figure I saw was close to 3%. This is a part of that whole effort to have our graduates, young people, have job opportunities. It will never always be about government providing the job opportunities, but the private sector, Being Your Own Boss, private sector, these are all part of the whole system that contributes to lowering unemployment."

Courtney Menzies:
"Don't you think though that it's a bit bleak, kind of a bleak future for youths to look forward to, they go into school, they study psychology, they study criminology, they study all these things, maybe they go abroad to study, they come out of school but they can't find a job outside of a call center?"

Bernard Wagner, Mayor of Belize City
"But Orson and the Peak Outsourcing clearly indicated to you that it's not only about jobs, it's about a career and you can find a career within the BPO sector."