With the pandemic hitting hard on business and industry, special requests have been made by the association to allow call centers to be declared as essential business, with adherence to all government-advised SOPs.
P@SHA (Pakistan Software Houses Association) expressed its heartfelt gratitude to Mr. Asad Umar, Chief of National Command & Operation Centre (NCOC) over the decision.
P@SHA had requested the NCOC to include call centres under essential services and exempt them from the 50 percent work from home policy and time restrictions at the NCOC meeting on April 29th, 2020.
The official statement by P@SHA said,
We are also grateful to the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecom (MoIT&T) and the Pakistan Trade Development Authority (TDAP) for supporting our proposal.
This exemption is now in force and will continue to be so in the future. All call centres are strongly advised to follow the COVID -19 SOPs to the letter.
P@SHA is certain that this exception will benefit Pakistan’s Call Centers, despite the fact that other regional developing countries have suffered substantial setbacks as a result of the pandemic.