Sri Lanka’s Exetel (Pvt) Ltd this week signed a contract for the supply of sales and support services to a major Australian telecommunications company and is aiming to pay over Rs 200,000 per month for skilled personal required for the job. Commenting on the size and importance of the contract, Exetel General Manager Ms Rukshani Perera was quoted in the statement as saying, “this is a great leap forward for Exetel in terms of further growing our company and I am looking forward to the challenge of recruiting so many new highly professional personnel. Even though we are Sri Lanka’s highest payer for excellent people it will be a challenge to find another 100 of the calibre of people who will ensure this project is as successful as it is planned to be. We expect to continue to have to pay in excess of Rs 200,000 a month to attract the right quality people to fill these roles.”
Exetel signed a contract with AAPT, Australia’s third largest telecommunications service provider, to provide dedicated sales and support services for AAPT’s small/medium data services to Australian companies. The contract runs from January 16, 2012 to December 31, 2013 if the agreed sales targets are met.
The services to be sold and supported are AAPT’s Ethernet and fibre business data services at prices of between US$500.00 and US$2,500 per circuit. The number of circuits to be sold under this contract begins at 50 services per month in February 2012, ramping up to 400 services per month in November 2012. Exetel and AAPT have been trialling these concepts for the past six months and other sparties are satisfied that the planned targets are sensibly achievable, Exetel said in a statement.
The company has already began to extend its premises in the World Trade Centre to cater for the additional 100 personnel it plans to employ over the first nine months of 2012 and will complete the training of the initial 30 people over the first 2 weeks of January 2012. Additional personnel will continue to be hired over the remaining months of 2012 and the total new investments made by Exetel will exceed US$3 million over 2012.
It has been operating in Colombo since July 2008 and has almost 100 permanent professional staff at its WTC premises. The contract, and subsequent investments by AAPT will see a doubling of Sri Lankans employed by Exetel in Colombo over the coming 12 months and if the current contract is as successful as both parties believe it will be, personnel numbers will more than double again in 2013 to a projected number of just under 500 professional employees. |
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