The trade body for Bangladesh’s call-centre and outsourcing industry has a new leadership after both of its top officers resigned within a week of each other. The Bangladesh Association of Contact Center and Outsourcing (BACCO) announced on Sunday that its executive committee had been reconstituted at its 110th meeting on Saturday night, with Tanvir Ibrahim, managing director of Automation Solutionz Bangladesh and until now a vice-president, as president, and Faisal Alim, managing director of Wintel Limited, as general secretary.
The resignations
General secretary Touhid Hossain of Fifotech resigned on 8 September. “On 3 July I suffered a brain haemorrhage,” he told Prothom Alo. “On 10 July I had brain surgery. On my doctors’ advice I have to rest. Considering all this, I resigned.” President Wahid Sharif of Digicon Technologies PLC followed on Thursday. “I resigned for reasons of illness and family,” he said. “Besides, my company is doing a good deal of overseas work, so I have to give it more time.”
The new committee
The twelve members are: president Tanvir Ibrahim; senior vice-president Md Abul Khayer (Times ASL Call Center); vice-president Tanzirul Bashar (My Outsourcing Limited); general secretary Faisal Alim; joint general secretary Musnad E Ahmed (Skytech Solution); finance secretary Mohammad Aminul Haque (Impel Service & Solution Limited); and directors Abu Daud Khan (Enroute International Limited), Fazlul Haque (Nobel IT Solution), Abdul Kader (Virtual Market Solution), Zayed Uddin Ahmed (Ayesha Service), Mehdi Hasan Zulfikar (Monstarlab Enterprise Solution) and Saima Shawkat (ASK Telecom Limited).
“Widely controversial”
The new general secretary chose his words with the moment in mind. “We will quickly rebrand BACCO with all our members,” Faisal Alim said. “Besides, our ICT sector has already become widely controversial, which is bad news for our sector. We will take the sector forward with everyone in ICT.” Since the change of government on 5 August the ICT ministry, its projects and the trade associations close to it have been under scrutiny; the former state minister is in custody, and the interim government has begun reviewing contracts and the leadership of industry bodies. BACCO’s reshuffle is a leadership change driven by two men’s health and business, on the association’s account, but it happens in that climate, and the promise of a rebrand is an acknowledgement of it.
Why it matters
BACCO represents around 300 companies and an industry that employs some 90,000 people, most of them young and many of them women, taking calls and processing back-office work for banks, telecoms and overseas clients. It is a sector that grew on government contracts — the 333 helpline, the vaccine registration lines — and now needs to grow on exports instead. The new committee’s first test is whether its “rebrand” means that.
