Ref: Mumbai Mirror, July 24, 2007
A vision of hope
The countrys booming outsourcing industry brings good news to the blind
Manoj R. Nair
There are new job options for the blind now, apart from the usual work as
telephone operators and railway announcers
When Darjeeling native Uma Phago moved to Mumbai last year to fulfil her
dream of being financially independent, the blind 23-year-old hoped to get a
job at least as a telephone operator.
So Phagos present job transcribing medical records for a BPO providing
health care services is remarkable, especially because when she came to
Mumbai, she had not heard of medical transcription. At her seat in the
Godrej Industries Complex in Vikhroli, Phago listens to medical records
dictated by doctors in major American hospitals. She converts details of
diagnosis and physicals recorded in dictaphones to text form so that
hospitals there can meet statutory rules requiring them to keep detailed
medical records of patients. When I was a child, my parents would tell me
not to fight with my brothers because I would be dependent on them for life.
This job gives me a sense of independence that was beyond my dreams, says
Phago, who is studying for a bachelors degree in arts from SNDT University.
For people like Phago, Indias booming outsourcing industry spells good
news. A few months back, Tata Indicom inaugurated a call centre entirely
serviced by blind employees to sell their telecom products. The company
where Phago works, CBay Remote Services Limited employs around 400 people in
India, including 100 trainees at various centres. At its Mumbai facilities,
10 employees, including four trainees, are blind.
According to Pallavi Kadam, deputy director, National Association for the
Blind (NAB) which provides vocational training and recruitmentTimes Ascent:
Potential beyond boundaries
http://www.timesascent.in/ services to the blind, call centres offer hope of
creating mass employment for the blind. For the first time, there are new
job options for them, apart from the usual work as telephone operators and
railway announcers.
Phagos colleague Naeem Solkar learnt English stenography and basic computer
programming after obtaining a degree in arts. But no company was willing to
employ me. Medical transcription is a great job opportunity for us, he
says.
Another worker, Akram Khan, was unemployed for a long time though he had a
degree in economics and was trained to be a telephone operator. Government
jobs that once held promise for the blind are now few, he says. Hari
Bhalerao, who works as a telephone operator and clerk at a public sector
bank, says that at one time, the only jobs for blind people were as packers
and cane chair-makers. Later, we were employed as telephone operators. Few
new job opportunities emerged after that. Call centres offer new hope for
the unemployed blind, says Bhalerao.
Shaival Trivedi, business head of CBay RSL, says the idea of employing blind
workers came after a casual enquiry from NAB which had trained the first
blind transcriptors in India four years back. At that time, we were
starting to train a new batch of recruits. We decided to give the NAB
candidates a chance, says Trivedi.
When the new recruits took their seats on the work floor, their presence
initially bewildered the other workers and trainers. It was a shock when we
were informed that visually impaired workers were joining us. We have
sighted people who struggle with the requirements of the job, says
Raghunathan, a trainer.
But the misgivings about the new workers were proved unwarranted when they
met and even crossed daily targets. Depending on the size of the medical
records of each patient, each operator is expected to transcribe between 15
and 20 files a day. The transcriptors are expected to convert one minute of
voice based information into text in seven minutes. The trainers claim the
new workers have rarely missed the target. They have great listening and
comprehension skills and that is what is required, says Trivedi.
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