India To Start Its Maiden BPO Behind Bars
A Bangalore based IT firm Radiant Info Solutions, which is one of the key sponsors of 20-20 cricket tournament is set for a public private partnership with the prison authorities to start the first ever BPO behind bars. The idea developed from a conversation between G N Gopinath Reddy, the director general of prisons and C Narayanacharyulu, director of the Radiant Solutions.
The officials believes that providing jobs to the inmates in the IT sector can help find jobs easily after their release. Research shows that there are about 40% of the prisoners in the Cherlapally Central jail of Hyderabad who are educated and can contribute to the working of this project. With two to three months of training, the prisoners are likely to earn about 120Rs per day replacing the average per day wage of 15Rs for a traditional worker in a prison.
Radiant Officials states that the prisoners would be initially allowed to work on the back end processes like data entry for bank related queries. The BPO behind bars would operate in three shifts and round the clock. Though the company is planning to take about 200 to 250 inmates, at the beginning they would focus on 70 prisoners capable for this job depending upon their aptitude and interest levels. The company is expecting to have British as well as US clients in future. With this news widespread, there is havoc in the minds of customers about their information theft. But banks like Goldmans Sach, Royal bank of Scotland and Marks and Spencers states that it is completely safe as sensitive data is not being shared with the prisoner. Moreover, the convicts of fraud and robbery would not be allowed to work in the project. Source