~Company Leverages Jamaica to Accelerate Technology-Driven Job Growth and Strengthen its Base of Digitally-Enabled Blue Chip and New Economy Clients
New ibex Jamaica Customer Experience Delivery Center~

ibex opens its Campus delivery center, its fifth location in Jamaica in five years.

CARIBPR WIRE, WASHINGTON:---: ibex (NASDAQ: IBEX), a global leader in business process outsourcing (BPO) and end-to-end customer engagement technology solutions, today announced the opening of its new Campus location in the Sunshine City area of Portmore, Jamaica. The new facility will create 1,300 digitally-enabled jobs, bringing the company’s total employment on the island to more than 6,500 people.
“The tremendous growth being fueled by increased client demand, technology innovation and new wins with Blue Chip and New Economy customers have helped us create more than 1,500 jobs in Jamaica this year alone and placed the island at the center of the BPO 2.0 revolution,” said Jaime Vergara, senior vice president, and Jamaica country manager, ibex.
“Not only has our growth accelerated economic development across Jamaica, but we are further positioning the country as a global shared services hub that is digitally transforming our clients’ customer experiences,” Vergara added.
Since opening its first site in 2016, ibex has invested more than $50M USD capital in Jamaica, increased employment from 200 jobs to more than 6,500, and enhanced the overall health and quality of life for its employees by investing more than $40M USD in annual salaries. With the opening of Campus, ibex now has a total of more than 5,000 seats in Jamaica across its five facilities in Ocho Rios, Portmore, and Kingston. More than 500 of these positions will be utilized to support ibex’s rapid growth in the company’s insurance sector.
ibex is currently hiring both on-site and work-at-home positions with plans for additional growth by the end of 2021, this includes new job creation to address the company’s staff augmentation efforts for IT outsourcing (ITO) services.
The company will leverage its Wave X technology suite to quickly ramp agent proficiency and accelerate its speed-to-green delivery operations. This includes deploying ibex Training Simulator, a virtual solution designed to accelerate agent learning and enhance customer engagement across digital and traditional communication channels. The company will also leverage the ibex Work@Home technology suite to drive cost savings, accelerate productivity and enhance the customer experience (CX) for clients while providing agents the ability to work at maximum efficiency regardless of location.

MARIGOT:---The tribute concert with 25 poetic performances for the late Raymond Helligar takes place here at The Gardens on Saturday, August 7, said organizer Sabrina Charville.
The open-air program “under the mango trees,” which begins at 4:30 pm, honors the work of Raymond “Big Ray” Helligar as a spoken word artist, said Charville. He was a “founding poet” at the recitals in Sandy Ground organized by Coffee & Soda Biscuits, a cultural association founded by Charville in 2017.
A number of the poets and spoken word artists scheduled to perform on Saturday will don a black beret, a cap often worn by Helligar. Melissa Fleming, Thierry Stephen, Clara Reyes, Sarina Alexander, Prisca George, Cristine Maccow, Lise Coats Flanders, Jeremie Huot, “and many more” readers are lined up to take the stage, said Charville.
Among the guest readers are writers published by House of Nehesi Publishers (HNP). “Tamara Groeneveldt, Rhoda Arrindell, Fabian Adekunle Badejo, Faizah Tabasamu (Rochelle Ward), and Magueda Jackson are listed to recite their poetry or read from Helligar’s work,” said HNP projects director, Lasana M. Sekou.
The signature poem of Helligar, “Sin Martin is We’z Own,” and his popular and defiant pieces, “Wee Mother Tongue” and “Holding on to We Cock,” could be a challenge to writers and performers asked by the organizer to read those selections, but they will delight and inspire the audience, suggested Badejo on his Culture Time radio show last Sunday.
“Sin Martin is We’z Own” is one of the poems found in the book Where I See The Sun – Contemporary Poetry in St. Martin (HNP, 2013).
Raymond Helligar was also known as a workers rights organizer, chamber of commerce officer in Marigot, and businessman. He passed away last June at age 73.
The concert admission fee is $5 or 5 euros. Covid-19 mask-wearing and distancing will be observed, said the organizer. For event details see the Facebook page of Coffee & Soda Biscuits https://fb.me/e/2y2aBQFkv.
The sponsors of the Raymond Helligar tribute include the Collectivity, CCISM, SoualiganSlangs, 92.5 FM, SKA, Radiance, and 4 Real We Agree with Culture, said Charville.

PHILIPSBURG:--- On July 26, the Honorable Ministers of General Affairs Silveria Jacobs; Justice, Anna Richardson; Finance, Ardwell Irion; TEATT, Ludmila de Weever; and Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, drs. Rodolphe Samuel; met with the Committee for Civil Servants Unions (CCSU) members; WICSU-PSU, WITU, ABVO with representatives of NAPB to continue the discussion on the 12.5% cost-cutting measures on the employment benefits. After calculations were finalized by the Ministry of Finance, the government paid out the 3% (50% vacation allowance) withheld since June 2020 during the first two weeks of July 2021.

During the meeting, Minister Irion presented two proposals from the government per article 112h of the LMA, this in keeping with the fact that the Constitutional Courts’ verdict is still outstanding. The first proposal represented a package to cover the 3% (50% vacation allowance) already paid out. Parties agreed that the 3% vacation allowance 2019-2020, paid out to government workers based on June 29, 2021, will be compensated by;
a) A reduction in the vacation days (2019-2020: by 2.8%)
b) The elimination of payment of overtime across the board except for the Ministry of Justice (0.2%)

The second proposal regarded the payment of the 2020-2021 vacation allowance, owed. Though liquidity remains a challenge, and the Government intends to pay out the balance of the 6% owed for 2021, parties agreed that Government would look into the possibility to consider the benefits mentioned in article 112h of the LMA, as personnel-related benefits. In so doing, some of the “benefits” such as travel expenditures, uniform allowances, and the compensation for the usage of personal vehicles to execute work-related services, could be accepted by CFT as personnel-related benefits, and be cut accordingly.

Prime Minister Jacobs stated, “These quarterly meetings will continue together with the Council of Minister and the CCSU members in the interest of our civil servants. We will also meet again with the union members once the Constitutional Court renders its decision on the petition of the Ombudsman regarding the 12.5% cost-cutting national ordinances.”

Discussions on the issuance of the 6% vacation allowance owed will resume once Government has information to share with the CCSU membership.

Miami, Florida:--- The 36^th annual CANTO Trade and Virtual Exhibition kicked off on Wednesday, July 28^th with Headline Sponsor, C&W Communications (CWC), hosting the first day of the three-day virtual event. Held under the theme, ‘The New Digital Reality – 2021 and Beyond’, the event was formally opened by David Cox, Senior Director, Regulatory, CWC and current Chairman of CANTO who welcomed participants and panelists to CANTO’s first-ever virtual trade event.

CWC put together an impressive line-up of discussion panels on the first day that focused on topical issues faced by the sector in the wake of an ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic. In the first session of the day, CANTO Chairman David Cox spoke with CWC CEO, Inge Smidts, in a candid and insightful virtual fireside chat. Smidts detailed how the regional communications and entertainment provider has been able to navigate through the challenges of the pandemic and put a uniquely ‘human’ face on the company’s commitment to keep its employees working and its customers connected.

Smidts said passionately, “with the onset of COVID-19 we focused on our two (2) ‘Whys’: taking care of our people and keeping our customers connected. My philosophy is that our people are our biggest asset. Having the network capacity to meet the demands of our customers is important but having the right people to take care of our customers is even more important”. Smidts attributed the company’s ability to continue to meet those ‘whys’ on the resilience of its employees and their willingness to face the challenges head-on to ensure they continued to find ways to keep customers connected.

As the Region’s only female CEO running a full-service telecommunications company, she offered the virtual audience some personal insights into her management style and leadership approach during the pandemic. Smidts said, “the pandemic induced a period of ‘unlearning’, forcing companies, including CWC, to find new ways to meet the needs of their customers and employees, and to embrace change”.

Other virtual sessions held included:

The ‘Women in ICT Leadership Panel Discussion’ adeptly hosted by Wendy McDonald, C&W Senior Director – Communications and Stakeholder Relations for the Caribbean. McDonald’s guests included: Daysi Andrades, Advisor to the Chief Information Officer at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC; Monica Desai, Global Head, Connectivity and Access Policy at Facebook; and Vice President of People at CWC, Sonali Dighe. This panel took an intense look at how the pandemic brought unique challenges for women in the workplace, particularly in leadership roles. In host McDonald’s preamble, she spoke to the additional challenges imposed on women in the workplace who were forced to suddenly and unexpectedly manage competing and overlapping work and family commitments on a scale and with a level of urgency many women had never encountered before, a situation that in some cases is causing women to leave the workforce. CWC’s Sonali Dighe impressed upon the audience the need for companies in the region to focus on their leadership pipelines and to implement succession planning programs with a focus on moving more women into leadership positions.

Later in the program, ‘The Parenting and Education in the Digital Age’ discussion panel saw an equally impressive list of panelists which included: Trinidad and Tobago’s Minister of Education, Dr. the Honorable Nyan Gadsby-Dolly; Sherra Carrington-James, President of both the Caribbean Association of Principals of Secondary Schools and the Trinidad & Tobago Association of Principals of Secondary Schools. Also bringing a wealth of knowledge on human capital in the region was Dominic Boon, Vice President of Talent and Organizational Development at CWC’s parent company, Liberty Latin America. The panel was expertly moderated by Simone Martin-Sulgan, Vice President for CWC’s Operations in Trinidad and Tobago, who as a mother of two herself, was deeply connected to the panel’s in-depth look at how parents have been searching for new, engaging, and innovative means to support their children through this new normal of the COVID-19 pandemic. The panelists sought to address the issues facing the education sector and in keeping with the overall conference theme, using our “New Digital Reality” to determine where the opportunities for intelligent collective collaboration exist and do our best to exploit them to our and our children’s advantage.

C&W Communications has been a long-standing partner of CANTO and through its Corporate Social Responsibility programs, and the work of its C&W Charitable Foundation, continues to invest in and advocate for greater digital access for the region’s children. CWC is committed to working with governments and industry stakeholders towards this goal.