ST. GEORGE'S: The Grenada government is trying to salvage its multi-million dollars investment in a failed Call Center in the rural St Andrew parish. Caribupdate has learnt that the Keith Mitchell Administration is seeking to sell close to half of its shares in Grenada Call Centre, and one of the potential buyers could be a Russian company which is otherwise negotiating with the government to get oil drilling rights just outside of the island. The latest attempt at divestment is part of a recovery programme to save the telemarketing company from permanent collapse. That plan, coupled with a drive to improve the work ethic of employees and potential employees, as well as to improve their on-phone articulation skills are being pushed as central to the reorganization. Following the collapse of the island's burgeoning off-shore banking sector, the government had said that the operations of call center around the island would wipe out the island's unemployment, put between 10 percent and 25 percent based on who you are talking to. Call Center Grenada was supposed to be the showpiece operation for centers that were to have sprung up in each of the island's seven parishes, providing jobs, according to government's projects for 10,000 people. But the business got into hot water from its start up -- from the political heat of what critics felt was another example of government's corruption, to poor management which ended in a debilitating strike of the workers. The venture lost more money selling products and services for overseas clients and last year government used share earnings from its 49% share in Cable & Wireless to pay off a $3m telephone bill. Forced into more austerity measures last October, the company remodeled its pay structure from a basic salary to a sale-incentive programme that caused workers uneasy and the eventual strike which forced the company to close its doors for days, eventually losing its nine clients. Government is keeping the divestment plan close to its chest, but according to a source in the Ministry of Finance 49 percent of Call Centre is going on the market GCC has been a controversial project from the start after the Grenada Government provided an unsecure EC$10m loan guarantee for the start up capital for a company owned by close relatives and friends of Prime Minister Dr Keith Mitchell. There was a public outcry especially since the deal did not get prior parliamentary approval. Government had initially retained some shares the entity but when the financial crisis at the centre reached catastrophic proportions the remaining shares were recalled. According to Manager Steve Horsford a number of their clients have returned their business to Grenada and GCC is undergoing some drastic changes. The merit based pay system which triggered the strike last year is now in force and the company is renting its own cables from Cable & Wireless cutting a huge chunk out of its operation costs. Horsford said they are also working on the fluency of workers to make more understandable to overseas clients. SOURCE: CARIBUPDATE.COM