Sun, Jun 14, 2009 page4

• FEATURE : US hopes that work can replace war in Mindanao

  • AFP
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  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.

  

  US Ambassador Kristie Kenney, left, and Makapado Muslim, president of the Mindanao State University in the city of Marawi, southern Philippines, try out a computer workstation at an English-language proficiency laboratory on May 27. The project aims to train Muslim Filipino students for jobs that require proficiency in American English.

  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.”
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