On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 9:01 AM, Loganaden Velvindron <loganaden_at_gmail.com>
wrote:
Another opinion from a guy who put his full name:
at 2015-08-11 07:24:47, Dr. Stephen Naicken
<
http://twitter.com/stephennaicken>wrote in to say...
In all honesty, I'm not surprised by OTAM's stance on the minimum salary
for foreign IT workers. BPO companies operate in a highly competitive
international marketplace where offering the lowest price to complete
low-end IT work is the only way to secure clients - let's be clear about
this, the talent of the workforce is largely irrelevant to BPO clients, as
the work is hardly cutting edge R&D. As the citizens of Vietnam and
Bangladesh become IT literate, BPOs will be increasingly tempted to either
recruit these individuals on low salaries or relocate their entire
operations to these nations in order to lower their operational costs.
Unfortunately, as the IT industry in Mauritius is so heavily dominated by
BPOs, the effects of this on the economy would be significant. The
Government has a simple choice: allow the BPOs to recruit cheap foreign
talent and continue to collect tax income from them; or implement a
protectionist salary policy and watch them leave. OTAM can not be blamed
for its stance, after all this is the nature of their business and the
primary duty of their members is to provide value to shareholders. In my
opinion, the problem is a Mauritian problem, not a problem of globalisation
or capitalism. In the 1990s, the textile industry and consequently the
economy was booming, but the country failed to invest appropriately in its
education system to prepare its population for the information era.
Unfortunately, the last government repeated this mistake by failing to
provide a clear vision and a set of policies to migrate the economy, and in
particular the ICT industry, to one driven by research and development
enterprises. I suppose the best jobs really are the ones that can not be
outsourced.
How about increasing tax on those companies to pay future laid-off IT
engineers, and future graduates to match 80% of their salaries similar to
what is done in France, if I understood Ish's proposal :p ?
We just collect MORE taxes :)
Received on Wed Aug 12 2015 - 07:38:45 PST