DAVAO CITY – More multi-national Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies are planning to relocate their operations to Davao City from India as it continues to grapple with a surge of cases driven by the more infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

Xavier Eric B. Manalastas, president of the BPO Association of Davao, said the city, considered as one of the country’s BPO hubs, has around 50 BPO companies with a total number of workers estimated at 45,000 to 50,000.

India has been considered as the “toughest competition of the Philippines” as a BPO destination in the world, according to Manalastas.

“Because of what happened to India, some of the work has shifted to the Philippines. We hope it did not have to happen that it caused the demand to go up,” he said.

He added that the industry has received inquiries from prospective investors who are setting their sights on Davao as an area for relocation and expansion of their services that will drive the growth of the industry this year.

But even Davao City is seeing a rising trend in the number of Delta cases. From the first confirmed Delta case reported last July 25, Davao City now has a total of four out of the six cases of this variant in the region.

Genome sequencing results released by the University of the Philippines-Philippine Genome Center (UP-PGC) in Diliman last August 5 showed that 16 cases of Alpha variant or B.1.1.7 and 33 cases of Beta variant or B.1.351 were detected in the region.

Of these, Davao City reported 6 Alpha and 21 Beta; Davao del Norte, six Alpha and 12 Beta; Davao de Oro, one Alpha; and Davao Oriental, three Alpha. To date, the region now has a total of 64 Alpha and 161 Beta, which originally surfaced in the UK and South Africa, respectively.

“Right now, BPO companies are already adopting blended or hybrid-type-of-work. Not everybody is required to work on site, so you can be employed in a BPO company and still enjoy the benefit of a full-time employee – all the benefits – and yet be able to work at home,” Manalastas said.

Manalastas said the association has drafted guidelines to avoid transmission of the COVID-19 infection in their workplace, among them include putting up of their own contact-tracing teams and voluntarily enforce “granular” lockdowns within their offices if there are infected workers.

The company’s in-house contact-tracing teams would be required to submit weekly reports to the local government, he added.