Cherlapalli BPO back in business

HYDERABAD: The business process outsourcing (BPO) unit at the Cherlapalli Central Prison, the first of its kind in the country, has been reopened recently as the Postal Department, Tata Consultancy Services and the Electronic Corporation of India Ltd came forward to give work orders.The BPO training centre, which had been closed for the last five months, was reopened last week. “We had to close it as the companies that offered projects could not deliver on the promise at the scheduled time,” KC Srinivas Rao, prison superintendent, told City Express.However, he said, the companies had last week informed them that they would give work orders in a month. “They asked us to be ready. We have started training the third batch of 25 members,” he added. The BPO has also got work orders from India Post and the Life Insurance Corporation recently and the schedules have been fixed. “We may get the orders in a month. Two trained batches are getting ready and the third batch is in the classroom,” Srinivas said. Exuding confidence, E Anjaiah, instructor at the BPO, said the staff were ready for the challenge. “The equipment too is in place. The inmates are brushing up their skills,” he said. When the unit was set up in collaboration with Radiant Info Systems in May, 2010, it had promised much with TCS, the Electronic Corporation of India Ltd and the Postal Department, announcing their intention to work with it.The BPO was set up with the aim of bagging work related to application management and development, data entry operations, testing and quality assurance and payroll processes. The unit took nine months to rig up its equipment. So far, about 50 inmates were given training. An inmate, A Srinivas Yadav  (23), said, “I have learnt all the basic computer skills here at the prison’s BPO for the last 10 months. I’m ready to work.” He said he would be released in a couple of years from the prison and he would try to get a job in a private BPO in Hyderabad.