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Anjali Prayag

This call centre employs 13 visually challenged people, in a bid to make them independent, but offers no concessions.

Good morning. Calling from Third Wave Teleservices. Can I take two minutes of your time, please?" Sounds like a routine call from a telemarketing company? Yes... only that the caller could be Muthu, Monica or Gurumurthy, who are among the 13 visually-challenged people employed at Third Wave Teleservices, a Tata Indicom franchisee at Bangalore. They are part of the 20-member team that runs the show at the call centre.

P.B. Thimayya, Managing Director, Third Wave, says that the reason he put these 13 `special' employees with other `normally sighted' people is because he believes that to compete, the visually-challenged should feel the pulse of technological advancement, competition and achievement in the corporate world. Thimayya saw the opportunity for employing the visually challenged when he met M. Srinivas, Chief Employment Officer, National Association for the Blind (NAB), Bangalore, about six months ago when the latter was campaigning for their cause.

Initially, Third Wave recruited four visually-challenged candidates, gradually took on 12 more, and at one time had 25.

Thimayya has personally trained all of them in the telemarketing business. He admits that initially he did try to place them in larger call centres, but met with several roadblocks. "Then I realised that if I don't take the initiative, it'll be difficult to convince others. My commitment for their growth has been higher since."

He feels that the visually challenged are more loyal and committed and, therefore, the company attrition level would be lower than the industry average. Talking of performance, he says, "BPOs generally employ average people and make them good. All that visually challenged people require is a little more training." He observes that most visually challenged people — graduates or post-graduates — have difficulty in speaking English.

But he warns that companies employing them should not be overridden by the sympathy factor. "Because of their disability, these employees could crave for sympathy, especially when they do not perform. Be firm, show empathy, but not sympathy," he says. "Like all other employees they have to perform to grow. After all, our aim is to make them independent, and not dependent on us." But initially they have to be given the long rope, which can be taken away before they try to ride on the sympathy factor. "A couple of them have actually dropped out, but the ones who have persisted have realised that in a corporate set-up, you cannot live on concessions all the time," he says.

The company has set the same performance targets for all its employees. "Every day, two applications have to be picked for the company and four appointments fixed for the next day. Usually, the target follows a weekly cycle," says Kavitha Patricia, co-ordinator at Third Wave. Incidentally, Muthu won the `best achiever' tag last month. Says Muthu, "Initially, I was rather hesitant to make calls, but am more confident now." Gurumurthy, who's also studying law part-time, says this job has helped him overcome all his inhibitions.

NAB's Srinivas says that the candidates he has placed are earning the same as other employees at similar levels. "When the output is the same, why should the compensation differ?" he asks. He has placed 1,631 visually-challenged people in engineering companies, garment factories, schools, colleges andIT and ITES sectors.

Is the BPO sector a boon to them? "Yes," says Srinivas, but, "there's not much training or orientation at NAB right now because we are not really geared up for it." But plans are afoot to start such training programmes, he says.

Currently, the Karnataka Chapter of NAB offers four kinds of training: Orientation and mobility training, which is a life-skills development programme; rehabilitation and basic training, which is a one-year programme teaching candidates simple vocational skills such as carpet making, chalk making and candle making; a two-year technical training course that NAB has been offering for the last 23 years; and basic and advanced computer training programmes.

While no minimum qualification is required for the first two, the technical training course mandates a minimum qualification in Braille SSLC. . All the courses are residential and, at any point of time, at least 100 people are present in the campus.

The catalyst

In 28 years, 2,305 candidates have registered themselves with the placement agency at the National Association for the Blind (NAB). And about 70 per cent of them have been placed successfully. The numbers may not seem very impressive. But the achievement is. M. Srinivas, Chief Employment Officer at NAB's Karnataka Chapter, has received the National Award for placing the highest number of blind people in the industry twice: in 1997 and 2004. He's also got an award from the National Centre for Promotion of Employment to the Disabled Persons (NCPEDP-Shell Helen Keller Award) for promoting the cause of employment opportunities for disabled persons in December 2004.

Srinivas, who joined NAB in 1986, says placement of the visually-challenged is a time-consuming process. "From the candidates' side, they need to be oriented to the corporate sector. They fit into jobs that require repetitive work." Visually-challenged people have been placed as peons, lecturers, and production and packaging workers.

Srinivas, who spends most of his time sensitising and convincing corporates about employing these `special people', says that the private sector has been extremely co-operative and open to the idea of employing them. His aim, now, is to make his candidates employable in the BPO industry. "When the whole country is benefiting, why not our people, which is a small cross-section of society?" he asks.

Picture by G.R.N. Somashekar

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