When consumers in the US dial a toll-free hotline for customer service, they may not be aware they are helping to ease a long-running insurgency.
Some of the calls are routed to a call center in the Philippines’ southern Muslim heartland, the Southeast Asian theater of the US-led war on terror where part of a new strategy is to smother the insurgency with job empowerment.
The US Agency for International Development, through its Growth with Equity in Mindanao (GEM) program, has teamed up with a business-process outsourcing firm, or BPO, in a novel venture to train and employ youths in the Muslim stronghold.
PHOTO: AFP
The rationale is to teach them English and hire them for backroom jobs outsourced by US firms seeking to cut operational costs at home.
Those behind the scheme hope that more money and improved living standards will wean many away from violence and contribute to developing a region racked by 40 years of insurgency.
“We are hoping to give them stable, long-term employment,” said Rene Subido, a GEM official who helped devise the plan. “By giving them a stake in the development here, they will have more to lose if the war continues.”
Subido said the Nevada-based BPO firm, the Hubport Group, had initially been apprehensive about setting up in Muslim Mindanao but was won over by the talent and eagerness of the region’s youth.
They set up a 24-hour back-room operation at Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT), where 42 employees churn out Web designs, software programs and medical transcriptions for US clients.
Others specialize in technical support, guiding clients thousands of kilometers away as they trouble-shoot Web pages.
No one ever thought of setting up in the southern Philippines because of the violence, said Hubport chief operating officer Eric Manalastas during a recent tour of the facility by visiting diplomats.
He said the firm — which also has offices in Singapore, Canada, Britain, Japan and Saudi Arabia — believes the south has enough manpower, “who if given the room to grow, can be harnessed into a highly efficient and competitive force that can match global standards.”
A large part of the manpower will come from MSU’s main campus in Marawi, an impoverished city on the shore of the picturesque Lanao lake where Arabic is widely taught and spoken.
It is also the heart of Islam in Mindanao, the Philippines’ main southern island where Muslim separatists have waged a decades-long rebellion to carve out an independent state.
Militants with links to al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) are also known to operate in the area, which intelligence experts consider fertile ground for recruitment.
A small room inside a brick building has been transformed into a speech and computer laboratory, where local tutors teach English.
For computer programmer Muhammad Husshan, 20, working for Hubport means he will be able to send money to his parents and seven siblings living elsewhere in the south.
“I hope more young people will be given jobs and will be trained in companies like this,” he said.
Like many here, Husshan believes that Muslims have been unjustly sidelined by the Philippine government, but he added: “I think people would not pick up guns if they are busy with jobs.”
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
‘MOBILIZED’: While protesters countered ICE agents, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz activated the state’s National Guard to ‘support the rights of Minnesotans’ to assemble Hundreds of counterprotesters drowned out a far-right activist’s attempt to hold a small rally in support of US President Donald Trump’s latest immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Saturday, as the governor’s office announced that National Guard troops were mobilized and ready to assist law enforcement, although not yet deployed to city streets. There have been protests every day since the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ramped up immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul by bringing in more than 2,000 federal officers. Conservative influencer Jake Lang organized an anti-Islam, anti-Somali and pro-US Immigration and Customs Enforcement
NASA on Saturday rolled out its towering Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft as it began preparations for its first crewed mission to the Moon in more than 50 years. The maneuver, which takes up to 12 hours, would allow the US space agency to begin a string of tests for the Artemis 2 mission, which could blast off as early as Feb. 6. The immense orange and white SLS rocket, and the Orion vessel were slowly wheeled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and painstakingly moved 6.5km to Launch Pad 39B. If the
RSS