Some 200 of the initial 225 employees at the newly opened APAC Customer Services, Inc., are Leyteños, Mr. Mike Marrow, APAC President and CEO informed during the press conference held right after the opening of the first call center in Leyte and in Region 8.

Mr. Marrow's revelation was in answer to the question of Philippine Information Agency on how many of the initial employees are from Leyte or from Region 8 for that matter.

APAC is targeting to have about 1000 employees when it is in full operations, Mr. Marrow said. He said that right now, APAC Leyte has 225 employees and 150 seats. The number of employees will be about 600 in summer or in April and before the end of the year or early January next year, the number will reach the 1000 marker.

This is indeed good news not only to the Leyteños but to the Eastern Visayans as a whole. This will mean job prospects for the graduating students and for the underworked employees in the public and private sector.

The reason why APAC cannot fully operationalize as yet, is because its building is still under construction. It was observed during the tour given by no less than APAC Leyte General Manager JoeMar Tabarangao, of the APAC Leyte offices that the portion which was occupied is only about one-third of the total floor area of then LAC Gym.

It was also observed that APAC has redundant services, which means that even if one service will bug down there is still a back up service.  Besides, the APAC technical supervisor informed that APAC has contracted the services of CISCO so that when spare parts or replacements are needed, they could be sent within one day.

Why Leyte for its first provincial call center? Mr. Marrow and Mr. Doug Almond, the Vice President for International Operations explained that they scouted around and they find that the Provincial Governor Petilla and his staff were very helpful and accommodating.

"The local government understood what our needs were and what the nature of our business was. We did not have to wait for weeks or months before our concerns were answered," Mr. Marrow said.

With an enthusiastic and cooperative local government, a deep talent pool, a good road network, and solid but underused ICT infrastructure, the company discovered that Leyte had all the critical elements required for a successful expansion, many of which have not been taken advantage of in the past, the APAC CEO and President said.

Another consideration is the presence of facilities particularly a strong fiber optic backbone in the province, Mr. Marrow added, "plus the fact that there are also over 20 top universities in the Region."

APAC Leyte will take care of the several newspaper customers like the Chicago Tribune and San Francisco Chronicle, Mr. Marrow informed. The other customers of APAC include transport and logistics, UPS, Wellport which is into insurance, health care related customers, among many others.

APAC has invested about P200 Million for the APAC Leyte project. (PIA 8)