– will train individuals to provide back-office support for hospitals across Guyana
Approximately 400 people from Enmore and surrounding communities on the East Coast of Demerara are set to gain employment in the BPO sector, following the opening of the new VChart call centre at Enmore Pasture, Estate Road.
The centre will train individuals to provide back-office support for hospitals across Guyana.
Based in India, VChart caters to a wide range of clients, with a strong focus on Durable Medical Equipment (DME) billing, providing cost-effective and high-quality services to help clients remain competitive.
Speaking at the opening of the facility on Thursday, Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony noted that the company will be able to support the back-end operations of hospitals across Guyana, especially as the government moves to digitize the public health sector.
Outside of the facility
“One of the things that we want to see in this community, is to make sure that we develop facilities that can benefit the entire East Coast. Again, not very far from here, you would see that a new hospital is being developed (Enmore Hospital). And I think there are some synergies between what’s going to happen here and what we will be doing at the new hospital, because what we are accustomed to in our hospitals has been things like open wards and paper charts and everything—we’ve got to write down and so forth. We are changing all of that, and everything will be quite digital.”
He added that there are lots of connections between what the ministry is doing right now in the health sector and what will happen in this facility.
He also pointed out that VChart will be focusing on overseas clients.
“..but I think the skill set that you will gain, the knowledge that you will gain, apart from working in this institution, can have other applications as you grow and develop,” he noted.
In October 2020, the PPP administration liberalized the telecommunications sector, resulting in increased investments in the industry.
Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Singh, speaking at the event, highlighted that since the liberalization of the sector, the cost of bandwidth today is one-tenth of what it was in August 2020.
This reduction, he noted, has made it possible for companies like VChart to invest in Guyana.
Inside of the facility
“That one act has resulted in Guyana being a more competitive and attractive place for information and communications technology-based components to operate. You would have a thousand persons working at the hospital and another 400 persons working here—that’s 1,500 persons working here alone. I want to ask all of you to get the word out there that jobs are available here in Enmore, and anybody who’s interested in a job, sure, here—and you’re very active amongst young people—get the word out there.”
Recounting the progress that VChart has made over the years in Guyana, Chief Executive Officer for VChart, Vinyal Shankar gave a backdrop of when the company first landed in Guyana and how it has grown.
“The journey started maybe in 2001 when we first came and trained a few people in Guyana, and that’s when, you know, we’ve always felt that Guyana can deliver to the U.S. what is required by the back-office services. And thanks to, you know, Mr. Peter Ramsaroop—when we met initially, he encouraged us to come here and start off, and within a couple of months he ensured that we could start this process. We set up one pilot and it went on to another one, and now it’s the third one.”
He added that initiatives like these are part of their mission to allow Guyana to reach into the dominant world record market.
“We were very cautious, because the clients in the U.S. are very, very demanding, and we wanted to see how it can work out for them and for us. But we have been able to prove it, and we want to make Guyana part of the world map for back-office services. We need to beat, you know, Ireland, the Philippines, India for that matter—and I think, you know, we have it to show them.”
At the new call center, persons would be hired in batches of 30. Applicants also have the opportunity to move up in ranks such as team lead, supervisors, country managers, and much more.
V-Chart currently employs 162 Guyanese at its other locations at Tuschen, East Bank Essequibo and Georgetown.
