SubscribeI suspect I’m in a small minority when I mourn the retreat of the Indian call centre, even though it’ll create 450 jobs in this country.
To be fair, I’ve no experience of the Powergen call centre that’s closing, but I doubt very much that the move will reduce the number of consumer complaints. As it happens one of the only call centres that’s not left me frustrated is in India and belongs to Belkin. Their people are superb masters of complex technical gubbins. But that’s not the main point.
Exporting work may not sound like a good idea, but it actually brings many benefits. Our economy is dependent on trade, but you can’t trade much with paupers. Helping India, a friendly democratic nation, get strong makes sense and wealthy nations tend to be more stable and less likely to harbour extremists. So it makes us safer and doesn’t cost as much as we think because we get a lot back.
Not only that, the UK already has a shortage of labour for less desirable jobs, but we don’t much like importing workers (and, truth be told, most foreigners would rather live and work in their own countries).
