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Siliguri, Nov. 5: A company that had opened the first call centre here two years ago today decided to suspend its operations for poor connectivity at its unit, sending a huge blow to the image of Siliguri as an emerging IT hub.
The Calcutta-based Xplore-Tech Services Pvt Ltd was the first to open the voice call centre or business process outsourcing (BPO) here on November 11, 2006 to cater to clients in the US and also to offer jobs to the youths of north Bengal.
“In the past six months, the broadband connectivity had snapped 24 times, two-three hours on every occasion at night, the prime working hour for any call centre. We had to lose two US clients because of these frequent interruptions, while some others had asked us to do their work from our Calcutta centres. We have incurred a minimum loss of around Rs 80 lakh during this period,” Pankaj Dhanuka, the director of the company, said over phone from Calcutta. “We have regularly talked to the private service provider but nothing has changed.”
The director said there was no other alternative but to suspend operations of the 120-seat centre till the first quarter of 2009. “Another private service provider, which is likely to create infrastructure in Siliguri, has promised us the bandwidth necessary for a voice BPO by March. Although we are facing problems, we are not contemplating winding up our units and will prefer to wait till then,” Dhanuka said.
Along with the connectivity bottleneck, problems of employees had added to the company’s woes. While many of the workers used to stay away from duty without informing authorities for days, some had left the job after a few days. “We had started with more than 150 employees, but are left with only 10-15 now,” Subharthi Roy, the administrative head in Siliguri, said. “The existing employees have been offered to work at our Calcutta centres.”
The Acclaris, another Calcutta-based company that has opened a non-voice BPO in Matigara, near here, expressed surprise over the Xplore-Tech’s decision. “It is indeed a bad news,” Ashish Sen, the director, said.
Urban development minister and Siliguri MLA Asok Bhattacharya, whom the Xplore-Tech officials met at Writers’ Buildings in Calcutta today, said he had requested them not to take any hasty decision. “I will talk to the broadband service provider in the next two days to ensure better connectivity to the company.”
