By Staff Reporter
April 18, 2016
City Mayor, Kgosientso Ramokgopa, today turned the sod to mark the beginning of tghe construction of the Hammanskraal Business Process Outsourcing (BPO).
This follows the land swap agreement signed with the University of Pretoria in 2012 for the land inffront of Kanana. It is also a follow up to the announcement of Gauteng Premier, Mr David Makhura, in his State of The Province Address on interventions to change the space and structure of Gauteng City Region’s economy to help address unemployment, poverty and inequality.
The Northern Development Corridor, which will anchored around Tshwane as South Africa’s administrative capital city and the hub of the automotive sector, research, development, innovation and the knowledge-based economy, will soon boast a BPO in Hammanskraal.
The Tshwane BPO Park is a fibre optic cable connected campus style development enabled for business process outsourcing services. The BPO is expected to create 3 000 job opportunities for the Hammanskraal community, while the existing building will be repurposed to cater for a training academy, incubation centre, crèche, clinic, canteen, accommodation rooms and recreational facilities.
The BPO is set to be a game changer by offering a globally competitive facility to both the public and private sector and contributing significantly to the Gauteng Province’s Township Revitalisation programme. The move will see Tshwane gaining first-mover advantage over other regions in accelerating industry growth, attracting private and public investment, facilitating job creation, skills and infrastructure development and positioning the city as the BPO location of choice for local and global BPO operators. The initiative is also set to position the city as an alternative and ideal investment location.
“The BPO industry was identified as one of the key economic drivers in South Africa’s Industrial Policy Action Plan one and two as the government believes that if stimulated by appropriate measures and interventions, this industry could lead to increased foreign investment, sustainable large-scale job creation, infrastructure development and economic growth.
“This sector has the best job creation potential with a low entry level skills barrier and can be used as a weapon against unemployment predominantly among the youth. It is therefore a viable catchment sector for currently unemployed youth with a matric or having dropped out of tertiary education” said Mayor Ramokgopa.
