LATHITHA has set up offices in downtown Jozi, ready to take advantage of the burgeoning call centre business the City is focusing on attracting.

EXPRESSING their confidence in the sector-support programmes initiated by the City of Johannesburg, call centre company Lathitha Contact Services has opened for business - with its offices right in the central business district.

Bulelwa Koyana, CEO of Lathitha Contact Services

Lathitha is a wholly black female owned emerging company that is seeking to establish itself in the expanding South African business process outsourcing, or call centre, industry.

As a black economic empowerment partner with Dimension Data's subsidiary, Merchants, Lathitha hopes to secure clients from domestic and foreign markets.

"We are very encouraged by the confidence that small and medium enterprises in particular have show in investing in the inner city," said Charnell Hebrard, a project consultant in the City's economic development unit. "This will ultimately support the City's initiatives to create a vibrant business process outsourcing zone."

A major factor persuading the company to set up its premises in downtown Johannesburg is the need to be closer to its labour pool. It also forms part of the City's larger strategy to have a technology hub in the city centre.

A common problem faced by workers is transport: those who work at call centres servicing international clients tend to work at odd hours and finding a way home had they been elsewhere would be difficult.

With the constant focus on improving transport, safety and security and other infrastructure in the inner city, Hebrard hopes downtown Johannesburg will be a better place in which to live and work.

"Being in the city gives businesses easy access to one of the largest labour pools in the country. We have done a lot of work to show the central business district as a geographical focus point in the area," she said.

Staff at the opening of the Lathitha Contact Services call centre in the city centre

Call centres are expected to become an R8,6-billion industry employing some 100 000 people by 2008, with the majority based in Gauteng, and more so in Johannesburg.

"With an estimated 60 000 new jobs created in the industry by 2009, Lathitha and other business process outsourcing operators are taking advantage of the return to the central business district based on a sound commercial business case," Hebrard explained.

The Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality is also working to promote a sustainable outsourcing or call centre industry within the city. At present, Hebrard said, the two main stumbling blocks to the initiative were cost of telecommunications and labour, and the City had initiated projects to mitigate those challenges.

Through its Skills Development Hub, the cost of training previously disadvantaged people will be subsidised to a certain extent by the City, which will then maintain a database of skilled workers to be used by companies. There has also been much interest from business in these subsidies.

"In the short term this is more of a virtual process, with in-house training, but our intention is eventually to have a physical 'bricks and mortar' Skills Development Hub," Hebrard said.

The City is also busy establishing a business process outsourcing and off-shoring zone, which will support and facilitate the sector. Though its exact location and size in the inner city is not yet known, businesses wishing to set up in the area will still be able to take advantage of the Urban Development Zone tax incentive.

"We definitely have a window of opportunity, but we have to capitalise on it by 2008, otherwise it might be too late," Hebrard said.

The creation of such new industries forms a vital part of the City's Joburg 2030 development strategy, which plans to convert vacant spaces within the Urban Development Zone into business support hubs.

"The business process outsourcing industry in Gauteng is going to generate a lot of opportunity," said Lathitha's chief executive, Bulelwa Koyana. "Being based in the city is a tremendous advantage for us, as it is highly accessibly to our staff, who are a vital component of our business."