IT Zone Park Eyed on Capitol Property
by Carla Gomez

Gov. Joseph Marañon yesterday said he is talking to investors interested in setting up a world-class Information Technology Zone Park on a portion of the provincial government property in Bacolod City that was recently cleared of squatters.

The IT Zone Park will not only provide the province with needed resources to develop the countryside but will also generate jobs for Negrense graduates who will no longer have to seek employment elsewhere, Jose Ma. Valencia, chief of staff of Marañon said.

If 1,000 Negrenses are hired at a call center at the IT Zone at salaries of PhP 15,000 it would mean PhP 15 million monthly in circulation.

The governor said he was informed that IT centers have brought in about P30 million monthly to Cebu's economy.

Valencia said, “The investors are talking about a lease agreement of at least 1 hectares of the Capitol property but they might as well buy it from us.”

Meanwhile, the provincial government is taking steps to improve the English proficiency of its students for eventual employment in call centers, Valencia said.

The governor and Education Regional Director Victoriano Tirol have discussed requiring students to speak English on their campuses, Valencia said.

"We have to refocus our policies, we cannot go on talking about Taglish, that is a misplaced nationalistic policy because we are losing our competitiveness to other countries," Valencia said.

The provincial government has also hired John Clements Consultants Inc. to conduct the training of public school teachers on how to improve their teaching skills in English oral proficiency.

Ongoing yesterday at the Mambukal Resort was the training of 22 high school English teachers by Rocky Peltzman, JC English, as a secondary language consultant.

Board Member Dino Yulo, Sanggunainag Committee on Education chairman, said what is important is, even if the IT centers are not up in a year's time, Negrense students are being prepared for them now.

Peltzman said about .5 million IT jobs through a wide range of offshore services involving data entry, call centers, content management, animation, transaction processing, accounting, engineering and financial analysis are expected to open up in the Philippines.

Among the 40 call centers in the Philippines for which data are available, she said the average growth rate for 2004 was 136 percent.

Today the Philippines has the second-highest market share in offshore service delivery next to India, she said.

Results of John Clements’s oral proficiency tests in eight areas in the country placed Bacolod City in third place after Iloilo and Cebu, with the National Capital Region at the bottom.

In Iloilo those tested had proficiency of 78 percent, followed by Cebu at 70, Bacolod at 63, Baguio - 62, Cagayan de Oro - 57, Davao - 57, Dumaguete - 49 and NCR - 48.

*CPG
**This article was originally published on the Visayan Daily Star on May 17, 2005, and is reprinted with permission from the author. (http://www.visayandailystar.com/2005/May/17/topstory3.htm)